- test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org - classiccmp.org

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

I would be happy to give these machines and video monitors to anyone who want them (one was refurbished by Star Technology in Colorado; "newer" software too). Would you know of someone who might be interested? Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121 >From ASquires(a)idecpharm.com Tue Jul 11 16:12:31 2000 Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 15:44:34 -0700 From: ASquires(a)idecpharm.com To: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com> Subject: Re: Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home Hi Don I am not averse to shipping them, but I would not wish to incur the cost of boxing and shipping (although I do have the shipping box for one cpu). So, letting someone pick them up here in San Diego would be easiest for me (I live in Bonita). Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121

26 years, 1 month

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Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

I would be happy to give these machines and video monitors to anyone who want them (one was refurbished by Star Technology in Colorado; "newer" software too). Would you know of someone who might be interested? Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121 >From ASquires(a)idecpharm.com Tue Jul 11 16:12:31 2000 Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 15:44:34 -0700 From: ASquires(a)idecpharm.com To: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com> Subject: Re: Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home Hi Don I am not averse to shipping them, but I would not wish to incur the cost of boxing and shipping (although I do have the shipping box for one cpu). So, letting someone pick them up here in San Diego would be easiest for me (I live in Bonita). Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121

26 years, 1 month

1
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Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

I would be happy to give these machines and video monitors to anyone who want them (one was refurbished by Star Technology in Colorado; "newer" software too). Would you know of someone who might be interested? Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121

26 years, 1 month

1
0
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Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

I would be happy to give these machines and video monitors to anyone who want them (one was refurbished by Star Technology in Colorado; "newer" software too). Would you know of someone who might be interested? Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121 >From ASquires(a)idecpharm.com Tue Jul 11 16:12:31 2000 Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 15:44:34 -0700 From: ASquires(a)idecpharm.com To: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com> Subject: Re: Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home Hi Don I am not averse to shipping them, but I would not wish to incur the cost of boxing and shipping (although I do have the shipping box for one cpu). So, letting someone pick them up here in San Diego would be easiest for me (I live in Bonita). Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121

26 years, 1 month

1
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Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

I would be happy to give these machines and video monitors to anyone who want them (one was refurbished by Star Technology in Colorado; "newer" software too). Would you know of someone who might be interested? Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121 >From ASquires(a)idecpharm.com Tue Jul 11 16:12:31 2000 Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 15:44:34 -0700 From: ASquires(a)idecpharm.com To: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com> Subject: Re: Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home Hi Don I am not averse to shipping them, but I would not wish to incur the cost of boxing and shipping (although I do have the shipping box for one cpu). So, letting someone pick them up here in San Diego would be easiest for me (I live in Bonita). Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121

26 years, 1 month

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Pertec Interface Cable Fun

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>I've briefly looked at the Pertect pinout as per a short >document on John Wilson's web site. However, I didn't >study it enough to have a feel for what happens if the >cables are hooked up backwards (ie simple non-function >versus a smoke-releasing exercise). > >Does anyone know what happens under these conditions? "Nothing happens". i.e. no magic smoke comes out. I've done it many, many, many times. Tim.

26 years, 1 month

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RT-11 reference "cards" available

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Jeffrey l Kaneko <jeff.kaneko(a)juno.com> wrote: > Aaron: > > I received the "card", awhile ago. > Thanks! Got mine a little while back, too. Many thanks. I've been moving piles of PDP-11 stuff from one side of the room to the other and I'm just about ready to reassemble a working system. Cheers, -ethan ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/

26 years, 1 month

1
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RT-11 reference "cards" available

by jeff.kaneko＠juno.com

Aaron: I received the "card", awhile ago. Thanks! Jeff On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 00:55:49 -0700 (PDT) Aaron Nabil <nabil(a)spiritone.com> writes: > > 2 of the shorter RT-11 pocket reference guides. > > Free. Email me directly. Include mailing address. > > -- > Aaron Nabil > ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.

26 years, 1 month

1
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Networking Apple IIc or IIc+

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated 7/10/00 1:09:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ethan_dicks(a)yahoo.com writes: > --- "Paul R. Santa-Maria" <paulrsm(a)ameritech.net> wrote: > > ---------- > > > From: Ethan Dicks <ethan_dicks(a)yahoo.com> > > > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > > > Subject: Re: Networking Apple IIc or IIc+ > > > Date: Friday, July 07, 2000 04:52 PM > > > > > There were three versions of the Apple IIgs: ROM 00, ROM 01, and ROM 03. > > ROM 00 and ROM 01 have the same hardware with a different ROM. The ROM 03 > > had different hardware (more memory on the motherboard, for example) and > > you cannot convert an earlier version to a ROM 03. > > Looking around on the motherboard - my IIgs has 128K of "Standard Ram", 64K > "Sound RAM", 128K "Fast RAM" an Apple-brand memory card 1/4 full of 256Kx1 > chips (256Kb out of 1Mb) and the following stenciled on the ROM - "342-0077B > / > M231001-243P 743100 / (C) Apple 78, 81, 83, 86, 87 / (C) Microsoft 77" > > Presumably from your comments, the ROM-03 motherboard has more RAM than _ > that_. > > There are two jumpers on the Apple RAM card - J1 and J2; and a jumper on the > motherboard under the power supply - W1. > > Oh... per our recent discussions here, the IIgs _does_ have a Z8530 SCC > onboard > > > > A ROM 03 is considered the best if you are going to run GS/OS, the Apple > > IIgs 16-bit native operating system. I am happy with my ROM 01 since I > use > > it like an 8-bit Apple IIe. > > But what's the difference between ROM 01 and ROM 02? Is it possible to get > either an authentic replacement chip or to locate an image file and burn my > own? > > Thanks, > > -ethan > I remember there being a ROM upgrade for the GS models. Presumably it was just a chip swap. I have no more info about it though. DB Young ICQ: 29427634 hurry, hurry, step right up! see the computers you used as a kid! -> www.nothingtodo.org

26 years, 1 month

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Networking Apple IIc or IIc+

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- "Paul R. Santa-Maria" <paulrsm(a)ameritech.net> wrote: > ---------- > > From: Ethan Dicks <ethan_dicks(a)yahoo.com> > > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > > Subject: Re: Networking Apple IIc or IIc+ > > Date: Friday, July 07, 2000 04:52 PM > > > There were three versions of the Apple IIgs: ROM 00, ROM 01, and ROM 03. > ROM 00 and ROM 01 have the same hardware with a different ROM. The ROM 03 > had different hardware (more memory on the motherboard, for example) and > you cannot convert an earlier version to a ROM 03. Looking around on the motherboard - my IIgs has 128K of "Standard Ram", 64K "Sound RAM", 128K "Fast RAM" an Apple-brand memory card 1/4 full of 256Kx1 chips (256Kb out of 1Mb) and the following stenciled on the ROM - "342-0077B / M231001-243P 743100 / (C) Apple 78, 81, 83, 86, 87 / (C) Microsoft 77" Presumably from your comments, the ROM-03 motherboard has more RAM than _that_. There are two jumpers on the Apple RAM card - J1 and J2; and a jumper on the motherboard under the power supply - W1. Oh... per our recent discussions here, the IIgs _does_ have a Z8530 SCC onboard > A ROM 03 is considered the best if you are going to run GS/OS, the Apple > IIgs 16-bit native operating system. I am happy with my ROM 01 since I use > it like an 8-bit Apple IIe. But what's the difference between ROM 01 and ROM 02? Is it possible to get either an authentic replacement chip or to locate an image file and burn my own? Thanks, -ethan ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/

26 years, 1 month

1
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ROLM PhoneMail System Info?

by bill_r＠inetnebr.com

I have been offered an IBM/ROLM phone mail system. I'm curious if it's something standard that's been put into use as a phone mail system, or if it's some weird proprietary thing. It's about 4 feet high, and about 4' x 3' or so. It runs on 220VAC at what appears to be many amps. Inside (the parts I could see - it's still in use at the moment) were several cards in slots, a physically large hard drive, a monster power supply, a tape drive, and some other bits. What I could see was: Priam P/N 330352 hard drive ROLM 40311 Phone Mail System Voice Compression I/O Card 8 Channel Voice Card AP 4MB RAM 41508 System Processor II 41002 Unless it's to go to the junkyard, I need to let them know by Friday (tomorrow) sometime. The hard drive is making "bad bearing" noises, and the voice mail has started to "stutter". They found a newer box to replace it that's about the size of a bread box for less than a refurb hard drive would cost. I'm not sure what I'd do with it, but if it's got anything useful in it, I'd try to salvage it for someone else, if they can arrange shipping. Bill Richman

26 years, 1 month

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Tandy DMP 430 Wide Printer Available

by dlw＠trailingedge.com

I'm sorting through and clearing out a few things but first I have a Tandy DMP 430 printer. It's one of the 132 col printers. It also has one of those noise-reducing printer cabinets. It's pretty big and heavy so free to anyone in the Houston, TX area that would like to pick it up. I guess I could ship it if someone really, really wanted it but it would be costly I think and a pain. I picked it up with a bunch of other stuff and have never tried it out so it's as is. ----- David Williams - Computer Packrat dlw(a)trailingedge.com http://www.trailingedge.com

26 years, 1 month

1
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Another tech legend for discussion!

by netsurfer_x1＠hotmail.com

I have another tech legend to be dicussed: It is generally believed that the Apple Lisa is what spurred Bill Gates to create Windows. But recently I have read something that says it was *not* the Lisa that inspired Bill Gates, but that it was VisiCorp's VisiOn software (remember that, yeah, me neither!). So my question is: Which one was it? Was it Lisa or VisiOn? ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 1 month

6
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Apple II keep list

by paulrsm＠ameritech.net

---------- > From: John R. Keys Jr. <jrkeys(a)concentric.net> > > Look for Woz editions and rom 3. You can take the Woz cover off of any IIgs and put it on any other IIgs. This is important for collectors who desire absolutely factory original equipment. Add to the list any non-Apple brand IIgs memory card. The Apple card can only hold a maximum of one megabyte, but other brands can hold more, some up to a maximum of eight megabytes. Some IIgs cards use weird memory (i.e., SIP) so you may be able to use the chips in another same card that is not filled.

26 years, 1 month

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Apple II keep list

by paulrsm＠ameritech.net

---------- > From: Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com> > I can't think of any logical reason why the //c ould be more popular than > the //c+ anywhere. The //c+ is so much better than the //c on so many > levels. > > Any idea what the deal is? The IIc+ had no international version (USA power spec only) and was not available outside the continental USA--not even Alaska, Hawaii, or Canada (or so says another post I just read elsewhere on the Internet). Paul R. Santa-Maria Ann Arbor, Michigan USA paulrsm(a)ameritech.net

26 years, 1 month

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Never mind!

by mrdos＠swbell.net

How much was the Atari 800XE? If shipping isn't too mush for the SE/30, then sure. Got any estimate on shipping costs? Thanks, Owen -----Original Message----- From: Marion Bates <Marion.Bates(a)dartmouth.edu> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Saturday, July 08, 2000 8:53 PM Subject: Never mind! Hey! Found a TI99 power supply in a new thrift store tonight. But thank you anyway! I also saw an Atari 800XE and an assortment of old PC clones, plus some old videogame stuff if you're interested. Do you still want the SE/30? Thanks again, -- MB

26 years, 1 month

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Never mind!

by Marion.Bates＠dartmouth.edu

A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 256 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/20000708/f22229e9/at…

26 years, 1 month

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(Fwd) Kaypro II

by dlw＠trailingedge.com

Some one here maintains a collection of boot disks don't they? Can you help him out? ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: Boing48(a)cs.com Hi, I have a Kaypro II but no docs or software. I would like to get a boot disk, can you help? Thanks, Allan ------- End of forwarded message ------- ----- David Williams - Computer Packrat dlw(a)trailingedge.com http://www.trailingedge.com

26 years, 1 month

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Apple II sprite boards

by paulrsm＠ameritech.net

---------- > From: Charles P. Hobbs (SoCalTip) <transit(a)lerctr.org> > > Around 1985 or so, a couple of manufacturers developed "sprite boards" > for the Apple II series (except the IIc, for obvious reasons) Picked one from eBay in November for $5. No docs or software, but I think I have the Byte magazine where Ciarcia presented plans and software for the original. I have not even plugged it in yet. Paul R. Santa-Maria Ann Arbor, Michigan USA paulrsm(a)ameritech.net

26 years, 1 month

2
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OpenBSD 2.6 on Sparc

by technoid＠cheta.net

I have a SparcStation 4/330 (sun4 architecture) running OpenBSD 2.6 on a 540mb drive. I have a few questions relating to fleshing out the original install: Where do I find descriptions for each package/port? How do I get PKG_ADD to resolve it's own dependencies? (goes to above question). I would like to install KDE or Enlightenment or some better Gui than X11R6..... I have Solaris 2.4 (sparc) installed on another drive (triple boot system - netbsd, openbsd, solaris) and so have the libraries the Compat_sunos manpage says it requires except for LIB5. Do I need a later version of solaris in order to get the libraries I need to run solaris dynamicaly linked applications? The mans are not specific enough for me to get there from here. The goal is to run Netscape for Solaris 2.4 under OpenBSD 2.6. I've cp'd the libs to the correct dirs according to the manpage but netscape fails to load with a trap almost instantly. I have updated my solaris 2.4 for the bind issues relating to netscape and other apps and those new libs are in place on my obsd drive in the right place but to no avail. In particular I would like to know why following the directions in the manpage results in my solaris 2.4 partition being no longer bootable. Solaris dies with several errors regarding Lib.so suchandsuch not being readable and dies. I only mounted the solaris drive for read to copy the files and each time I do that the solaris partition won't boot anymore. My guess is permissions being changed because the solaris partition is mountable under OpenBSD even after it will no longer boot, all files are there in the right place and OBSD reports the solaris partition as clean. What is happening here? Some equipment info: sd0 is at 0,0 540mb Openbsd Sd1 is at 1,0 540mb NetBsd 1.4.2 (gotta use 1.4.1`s miniroot to install on Sun4! Sd2 is at 3,0 1004mb Solaris 2.4 (can't boot from cd so I use TomsRTBT on my klone and dd an image then install from the image'd hard disk..... Hey, it works. Video is a CG6 daughtercard on my sparc's mainboard. X runs fine. I do have a cdrom drive that is not bootable but otherwise runs fine for all three operating systems. Thanks for your support. Please reply in e-mail as well as to the group. -- Jeffrey S. Worley President Complete Computer Services Inc. 30 Greenwood Rd. Asheville, NC 28803 828-277-5959

26 years, 1 month

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Question for NW Apple II users.

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- "John R. Keys Jr." <jrkeys(a)concentric.net> wrote: > ...I see the IIc+ around here and in St. Louis, MO all the time but I > already have three working units. They sell for around $2 to $10 > without a monitor. That sounds about right. I only have one IIc+, but it was $15 with an external 5.25" Laser-brand floppy drive, two Imagewriter Is and a smallish (9"?) mono monitor and stand, docs but no software. I'd wanted a IIc since I wrote kiddie-software under the Software Productions/Reader's Digest label in high school ("Micro Habitats", "Micro Mother Goose" and "Alphabet Beasts and Company" were our big titles). That's why I only have DOS 3.3 disks and the odd Infocom title; I haven't used an Apple on a regular basis since 1984. Now that the hardware is ultra-cheap, I can make up for all those lost years. -ethan ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/

26 years, 1 month

1
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Free Heathkit H19 manuals

by mark.champion＠am.sony.com

I have several Heathkit H19 and Zenith Z19 manuals if various conditions. Does anyone want them? Mark Champion Sony Electronics 206-524-0014 mark.champion(a)am.sony.com

26 years, 1 month

2
2
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Great Finds

by steverob＠hotoffice.com

Hey gang, With some help from Joe Rigdon, I found some really cool stuff this weekend. Located two complete HP 9000/832 minicomputers. After tinkering around for a few hours, I found one of them has a bad CPU and 3 of the 8 (total between two machines) hard drives had failed. So, between them, I managed to build a complete working system with some spares left over. What kind of tapes does the built-in drive use? The find-of-the-day however, was a HP 7980XC 9-track tape drive. Found this beauty in a dumpster at one of the junk dealers. It's god a few minor scratches on the front cover but, otherwise is in extremely good condition. The total asking price 5$. Anyone got spare DOCs for it? I hooked the tape drive up to one of the 832s but, just can't get it to work. Whenever I try to cpio or fbackup to the tape, the drive will try to work but, eventually gives a write error. The same thing happens with my other tape drive (HP7980) which I know is good. So, I suspect the problem is with the drivers, or configuration, or possibly me :-) If anyone can give pointers as to how to make it work, I'd sure appreciate it. See Ya, Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com>

26 years, 1 month

5
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Networking Apple IIc or IIc+

by paulrsm＠ameritech.net

---------- > From: Ethan Dicks <ethan_dicks(a)yahoo.com> > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Networking Apple IIc or IIc+ > Date: Friday, July 07, 2000 04:52 PM > > As mentioned previously on this list, I have a version 1.0 ROM in my IIgs. > What is the "best" version? Are they for sale or for download to burn my > own? There were three versions of the Apple IIgs: ROM 00, ROM 01, and ROM 03. ROM 00 and ROM 01 have the same hardware with a different ROM. The ROM 03 had different hardware (more memory on the motherboard, for example) and you cannot convert an earlier version to a ROM 03. A ROM 03 is considered the best if you are going to run GS/OS, the Apple IIgs 16-bit native operating system. I am happy with my ROM 01 since I use it like an 8-bit Apple IIe. Paul R. Santa-Maria Ann Arbor, Michigan USA paulrsm(a)ameritech.net

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>You write about this experiment with considerable confidence in your result, >considering that you haven't any conventional hardware for dealing with this >stuff. There must be something about your results that gives you the >confidence to proceed. What might that be? Are you getting verifiable >results, i.e. data that makes sense like ascii files, etc? Yes, ASCII (and EBCDIC, remember I'm recovering floppies originally written in the early 70's) files that make sense. I think, Dick, that sometimes you make this seem harder than it is. Many of the data formats are readable (in hardware) with something as simple as a one-shot and a UART. >Sampling and recording the analog signal might prove disappointing. The >data will be much harder to recognize in its analog form, particularly on >the inner tracks on a noisy diskette or drive. True, but the analog circuit would also be easy to simulate electronically. Just a few coupled linear and nonlinear differential equations! Tim.

26 years, 1 month

2
1
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Xerox DayBreak

by yoda＠isr.ist.utl.pt

>>>>> "Tony" == Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> writes: Tony> I'd probably use a 10125 (ECL-TTL translator) to turn the Tony> signals to TTL, then feed the syncs and video (the latter Tony> suitably reduced by a potential divider) into a multisync Tony> monitor and hope it could lock to it. I don't think many Tony> composite monitors are going to work at the sync rates of Tony> the D'break, are they? No, the D'break sync rates are usually out of the multisync monitor range. Mine can't sync to VSYNC rates below 58Hz or something, for instance. But I have not yet tried with older multisync monitors (damn, I sold my Amiga A3000 monitor...) Tony> Kevin Schoedel (?spell) lent me a Daybreak keyboard for an Tony> afternoon some months back. During that afternoon, I pulled Tony> it to bits, figured out most of the hardware details, Tony> powered it up from my bench supply and grabbed the output Tony> waveforms. Yes, Kevin did know I was doing this :-) [...] That's too great! he he I'll get busy as as I return home! And it may be fruitful to visit the junkyard this weekend for good-old multisync monitors. Cheers, -- *** Rodrigo Martins de Matos Ventura <yoda(a)isr.ist.utl.pt> *** Web page: http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~yoda *** Teaching Assistant and PhD Student at ISR: *** Instituto de Sistemas e Robotica, Polo de Lisboa *** Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, PORTUGAL *** PGP fingerprint = 0119 AD13 9EEE 264A 3F10 31D3 89B3 C6C4 60C6 4585

26 years, 1 month

5
4
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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>> My circuit is much more "hackable", anyone with a TTL databook can figure >> out what it does and improve on it. Or you can build one yourself from >> scratch. (Other than the 128K*8 SRAM, all the other parts were literally >> purchased from the local electronics shop. Heck, most of the chips can >> be bought at Radio Shack!) Total cost for the chips in my buffer is >> about $30.00, about half of that in the SRAM chip. >I sympathize with that, but for those of us who are much better at software >than hardware, something off-the-shelf is a big plus. OTOH, something I can put together on a Sunday afternoon with parts I bought at Radio Shack is an even bigger plus for me :-). It's not like my buffer uses any complex electronics. It's all perfectly- standard TTL parts and a SRAM chip, and it's currently residing on a pretty randomly wired solderless breadboard so you don't need any fancy construction techniques. Except for the capacity of the SRAM chip, this is all quarter- century-old technology. As Chuck pointed out, maybe the fact that this is quarter-century-old technology put together with quarter-century-old construction and design techniques makes it less accessible to some of the younger members of this list. Maybe the way to make it more accessible to them is to put the circuitry on a CPLD, I dunno, I think it's fine as it is. I suppose there *are* folks who might be interested in using such a device who don't know which end of a soldering iron to pick up, but a very valid point is that I built this without even touching a soldering iron! And the fact that I built it without even drawing a schematic first would tend to implicate the design as being on the naively simplistic side, too :-). (I still gotta draw that schematic up for you guys...) >Another point to note is that the Catweasel samples at 7 or 14 MHz (software >selectable). In reading some old 8" MFM disks, I found that there had >been a lot of bit-shifting over the years (or maybe there was not enough >write precomp applied to begin with) I will admit, MFM *does* require at least twice the timing resolution of FM. I once got in a small argument with some other members of this list about AC circuit design of MFM vs FM data recovery circuits. IIRC, they were insisting that MFM did come "for free" if you had the frequency response necessary for FM at half the data rate. My point was that it wasn't the max pulse frequency which made life difficult, it was the phase response (finding where the pulse occured in the window) that was the tough point. >, and I had to use an extra heuristic >to make them readable at all. I'm not sure that 4 MHz would have been >a high enough sample rate for these. Yeah, well, with my circuit if you don't like the sample rate, you buy a different off-the-shelf oscillator in a can and plug in. If you now need more buffer RAM, you plug in a second RAM chip and wire it up. That's IMHO the beauty, but maybe a software-only hacker doesn't see that. Tim.

26 years, 1 month

10
33
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Great Finds

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

All I can find out about this drive is that it's a streaming unit. Is this another repackaged Cipher F880 Microstreamer? If so, then yes I just downloaded the complete Volume 1 docs on Saturday; they're in both .TIFF and .PDF format. If the HP is a different beast, well, good luck... somebody's likely got the docs. -dq -----Original Message----- From: Steve Robertson [mailto:steverob@hotoffice.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 10:25 AM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Great Finds Hey gang, With some help from Joe Rigdon, I found some really cool stuff this weekend. Located two complete HP 9000/832 minicomputers. After tinkering around for a few hours, I found one of them has a bad CPU and 3 of the 8 (total between two machines) hard drives had failed. So, between them, I managed to build a complete working system with some spares left over. What kind of tapes does the built-in drive use? The find-of-the-day however, was a HP 7980XC 9-track tape drive. Found this beauty in a dumpster at one of the junk dealers. It's god a few minor scratches on the front cover but, otherwise is in extremely good condition. The total asking price 5$. Anyone got spare DOCs for it? I hooked the tape drive up to one of the 832s but, just can't get it to work. Whenever I try to cpio or fbackup to the tape, the drive will try to work but, eventually gives a write error. The same thing happens with my other tape drive (HP7980) which I know is good. So, I suspect the problem is with the drivers, or configuration, or possibly me :-) If anyone can give pointers as to how to make it work, I'd sure appreciate it. See Ya, Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com>

26 years, 1 month

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The Original MS-DOS 4.0

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Well, I never heared about the version you are refering to, but > DOS was basicly starting from 2.0 able to do task switching. > All Informations necersary where contained within a series of > structures with a single root. The only missing thing was a > table of task pointers to switch between - and a service to > store and restore the screen content. There have been several > products offering this service. And with DOS 4 MS supplied the > infamous shell, capable of doing this. You could load several > applications and switch via a hot key combination. Windows is > still today (at least Win9x) based on this very same mechanism > for context switching. Also the functions for 'background' > applications/drivers where designed to support application > switching. The famous TSR mechanism was not only ment to steal > some memory for crude interrupt handlers, but also for true > serviceprovider tasks within the OS ... well, I guess most > programmers never realized the potential offered and kept > limited to a simple one programm state of mind. > > All this was already available starting with DOS 2.x, just > it has never been 'official' until DOS 4.x I'd have to differ with you a bit on this. A co-worker and I spent 6 months writing a DOS 2.0-compatible file system for our own application which contained its own home-rolled multitasker; we had to write the file system because the DOS file system calls were (and through at least 3.3) were not serially-reentrant. Even then, the performance was so poor (we had just moved to deploying on iAPX286 machines) that we ditched the full-task model and created what we today would call "threads", although we simply called them lightweight processes back then. The context switching you're referring to revolves around switching some data structures, such as the file handle table; but you have to wait until a file system call is done before you can swap to the next task. Not useful when (like us) you're developing real-time software. As an aside, this was for the last firm for which I worked as a programmer; I left in '90, and dropped in for a visit in '95; at that time, they told me the system I'd designed was running in a DOS box under the Alpha-release of Win95 and was beating a comparable application running on a VAX. I felt very good that day... -doug q

26 years, 1 month

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Networking Apple IIc or IIc+

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Mike Ford <mikeford(a)socal.rr.com> wrote: > Many people have told me you can't network the IIc or IIc+ Hmm... I always thought you _could_. > but I am sure I remember somebody telling me the IIc+ could be kludged > to sort of work. Maybe that's what I'm remembering. > Skipping that issue (unless somebody knows more), I wonder if a > slower/dumber protocol than LocalTalk/AppleTalk might work? I _had_ assumed the IIc+ has a Z8530 SIO chip inside. If that is _not_ the case then it's probably some flavor of ACIA 65xx or 68xx UART. The Z8530 is a great chip, found in Suns, Macs, COMBOARDs ;-) For LocalTalk, Apple runs the chip at ~230kbps, IIRC (tangentally, I have the Byte article unveiling the 128K Mac where they describe a "slotless" architecture using virtual slots off the serial port in a manner that sounds like what USB has finally brought to the masses). I do not know if a 4Mhz 65C02 can pull data off the chip fast enough to be practical. We used to use a 4Mhz Z8530 w/an 8Mhz 68000 with plenty of cycles to go around. > The idea would be to plug a PhoneNet adapter into a IIc/IIc+ serial port, > Now add a second IIc/IIc+ to the "network" and run a normal terminal > program on it. Seems to me all you need to add is some kind of protocol for > a packet with an address field and it should work. Ideas, opinions? Kermit? That would handle a point-to-point network, any way. You might be able to start with a PPP implementation for the 6502 and retrofit some kind of ARPish protocol on top of it (since PPP lacks that sort of thing) and go >from there. On a side note, I recently aquired an older IIgs. It works and I have no software for it except my 1978-1983 era stuff for my old II. Did people ever network the IIgs to a Mac? If so, how? -ethan > ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>First of all, what, in the sampled bitstream tells you that a bit is "flaky" >or in any sense questionable? If it's different on multiple read passes, then it's flaky. If it's different when read on different drives, then it's flaky. But since this particular circuit samples the data after it's gone through the AGC and discriminator section in the drive, you can't look at an individual pulse and say that it's flaky. A circuit which recorded the analog signal from the head (or one of the preamp stages) would be far better for spotting flaky bits. > Since your sampler is working at a harmonic >of the theoretical data rate, you should be able to find anomalies easier >than one who's sampling at some other frequency, but these frequencies >aren't terribly precise because of mechanical variations and the general >fact that even closely specified crystals still aren't identical in >frequency. I don't think there's any magic that results from me working at a harmonic of the nominal data frequency. I could be sampling at 14.353773 or 3.5798 or 4.00 MHz and it's all the same, because none of them are "locked" in any way to the actual data rate. >How can you tell that your error correction is of the bit that caused the >error? There are, in every sample, some bits that will fix the CRC that >weren't necessarily wrong in the first place. True, but if there's a flaky bit then it's more likely to be causing the CRC error. If I go to the two flaky bits in a sector and fiddle them by hand, and all of a sudden I match the CRC, then we're doing pretty well. Keep in mind that even with more-bits ECC's there are also multiple ways you can fiddle bits in the data section and still match up with the error correcting codes. > Since you're looking for read >errors not necessarily written incorrectly, I assume you have some means for >making a decision? Do you simply plow through the file, inverting every bit >and retesting the CRC? Again, I look for bits that read differently on different read passes, and fiddle those by hand. > How do you decide where the bit boundaries really >are? I've got a "software PLL". It synchronizes on both data and clock pulses, and when it senses that it's seriously out of whack it can adjust more rapidly than a traditional one-time-constant hardware PLL. > How do you interpret the chaos in the write-splices? I pretty much ignore the chaos. I've developed some graphing techniques that help me decide where the write-splices are for a particular low-level data format. (Remember, I'm mainly concerned with hard-sectored formats which vary a lot from one controller to the next. Many have *no* address information recorded magnetically.) >Do you operate your sampler in parallel with an FDC in order to ensure that >you've gotten a sample that's readable by the FDC? No, mostly I'm looking at oddball hard-sectored formats that a normal IBM3740-derived FDC chip can't handle. And if I had the real hard-sectored random-logic controller, I wouldn't need my analyzer circuit :-). >Have you, in general, considered using a PLL e.g. 4046 or some similar >device for generating a precise multiple of the detected data rate and >"tracking-out" the mechanical influences of your drive on speed? I thought about it, but I don't think it's necessary. My 8x oversampling seems to be just fine for both FM and MFM data formats. When I start making the descriptive web pages this weekend, I'll show some graphs that indicate how I find write splice areas and track data rate frequency from my analysis software. (I do no analysis in real-time, it's all done post-acquisition.) Tim.

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 6, 15:54, Dwight Elvey wrote: > mann(a)pa.dec.com (Tim Mann) wrote: > > > > Another neat trick might be to notice when there is a CRC error and/or > > a clock violation, and in that case backtrack to a recent past decision > > where the second most likely alternative was close to the most likely, > > try it the other way, and see if the result looks better. Obviously one > > can't overdo that or you'll just generate random data with a CRC that > > matches by chance, but since the CRC is 16 bits, I'd think it should be > > OK to try a few different likely guesses to get it to match. > CRC's are quite good at fixing a single small burst. Dwight, I think you're confusing CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) with ECC (Error Correction Code). CRC is very good at detecting errors, including bursts of errors that might slip by simpler checks, but AFAIK tells you next to nothing about where they occurred. ECC tells you enough to correct small errors. I've not heard of anyone using CRCs for correction (not directly, anyway). > As I recall, > CRC32 can fix a single error burst up to 12 bits long. The > error correcting method is based on the cycle length of the original > polynomial relative to the length of the data block. What this > means is that if you have a burst longer than 12 bits, it is > more likely that the errors will appear to be outside the data > block than within the data block. Although disks use the V41 polynomial (X^16 + X^12 + X^5 + 1) not CRC32. > All errors that happen > within a 12 bit window are 100% correctable. Depends how large the data covered by the check is. For amounts of data larger than a certain size (dependant on the number of check bits and the algorithm used) there are several errors that will produce the same change in the ECC or CRC. So the window size is meaningless unless you also specify the data size and number of check bits. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

26 years, 1 month

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Networking Apple IIc or IIc+

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Mike Ford <mikeford(a)socal.rr.com> wrote: > >On a side note, I recently aquired an older IIgs. It works and I have no > >software for it except my 1978-1983 era stuff for my old II. Did people > >ever network the IIgs to a Mac? If so, how? > > The IIgs is a full localtalk ready Appleshare client machine, might be a > rom version issue... As mentioned previously on this list, I have a version 1.0 ROM in my IIgs. What is the "best" version? Are they for sale or for download to burn my own? -ethan ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/

26 years, 1 month

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Question for NW Apple II users.

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated Fri, 7 Jul 2000 1:51:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com> writes: << On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Mike Ford wrote: >> Perhaps the unfortunate thing is that I can think of >>nothing to do with a >> 100 old Apple II computers other than pull >>interesting cards and look for >> hard drives (the Vulcan is inside the powersupply). >>There are a couple >> models I would like to have in my personal >>collection, a plain II and a >> platinum II whatever it is, but thats about it. Otherwise they are just too >>A Platinum //e is an enhanced Apple //e with a >>built-in numeric keypad on >>the right hand side. It's also got the "platinum" >>covering. Nothing >>special. >There was also a Platinum //c. It had an extremely >nice keyboard (a major >improvement over the //c's crap keyboard). >> common and too indestructible (what else could you >>call machines that >> routinely still work just fine after 20 years of >>elementary school use?) >They are definitely work horses. I've never met an >Apple //e that was so >fargone it wouldn't work anymore. I even have Apple >][+'s that have sat >in horrible conditions still work 20 years later, with >just a few faulty >keys on the keyboard. >Sellam the platinum //e does have some differences from the regular enhanced //e besides the keyboard. for one, the extended 80 column card was now built into the planar so you didnt have to install a card in slot 3 anymore. I believe also the power switch was a little better than before. I remember our computer science teacher tell us to use the apple's power switch as little as possible since it would eventually quit working.

26 years, 1 month

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Free Tektronix 4014 manuals

by mark.champion＠am.sony.com

I have an official Tektronix 4014 service manual and a photocopy of a 4014 user's manual. If someone wants them, they can have them for free. Mark Champion Sony Electronics 206-524-0014 mark.champion(a)am.sony.com

26 years, 1 month

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Free Heathkit H19 manuals

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Mark Champion <mark.champion(a)am.sony.com> wrote: > I have several Heathkit H19 and Zenith Z19 manuals if various conditions. > > Does anyone want them? > > Mark Champion > Sony Electronics > 206-524-0014 > mark.champion(a)am.sony.com I've got an H19 terminal and no docs. Is this an all-or-nothing, or do you have multiple people clamoring for these? -ethan ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>CRC's are chosen for their immunity to pattern-sensitivity, among other >things, and ECC's, likewise are chosen on the basis of their suitability for >the sector-size, types of errors anticipated, etc. CRC-16, the one chosen >for FDC use, was chosen because it was already an established "standard." >There were, in fact, standard TTL devices commonly used to append CRC-16 to >data blocks in communication and disk/tape applications. There are a few >bitwise corrections that will make CRC-16 yield a zero, but there's no >reason to believe that introducing a bitwise change at one place or another >will yield the correct data just because CRC-16 yields a zero. True, the CRC-16 wasn't chosen for correctibility, but if you make multiple read passes over the data and spot a couple of "flaky" bits (changing >from read to read) and find a combination of 1's and 0's that matches the CRC, you're far ahead of someone with a hardware-only controller that doesn't allow access to the raw data for such "human judgement" error correction. Remember, you have to know how to do it yourself before you can do it on a computer! Schematic and code this afternoon folks! Tim.

26 years, 1 month

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Free Tektronix 4014 manuals

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

If any of the people who maintaining archives of these kind of docs ask first, go with them, but if not, rather than see them in the dump, I'll take 'em. let me know... -dq > -----Original Message----- > From: Mark Champion [mailto:mark.champion@am.sony.com] > Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 1:01 PM > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Free Tektronix 4014 manuals > > > I have an official Tektronix 4014 service manual and a > photocopy of a 4014 user's manual. > If someone wants them, they can have them for free. > > Mark Champion > Sony Electronics > 206-524-0014 > mark.champion(a)am.sony.com > >

26 years, 1 month

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Free Vax Tapes

by mark.champion＠am.sony.com

I have 30 small (6" dia) VAX tapes (Opus 6250) and 12 large (7" dia) VAX tapes (Scotch 700). I believe the small tapes are 600' x 1/2" and the large tapes are 700' x 1/2". I think they have all been written on once with data - no executible files. Tapes are free if you can pick them up in the Northend of Seattle. Mark Champion 206-524-0014 mark.champion(a)am.sony.com

26 years, 1 month

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Great Finds

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

At 10:45 AM 7/6/00 -0400, you wrote: >> That's probably a DDS (aka "DAT") drive ... at least, that's >> the only drive >> I've ever seen built-in to any HP 9000/8x2 or HP 3000/9x2. >> (It'll be a DDS-1, most likely) > >That's what I suspected but, wasn't sure. I'll get some so that I'll have a >system backup. Any idea how much data fits on one? > > >> How much memory do you have? (The 8x2 and 9x2 could have >> memory plugged into >> just about any slots (front or back!). > >One of the systems is configured with 4 X 8MB of memory. The other has 1 X >32 MB. I also have 8 additional 8MB modules that were pulled from the system >with the bad CPU. Haven't had a chance to check them out yet. > >Between the two system (and spares), I have 6 HPIB interface cards, 10 I/O >MUX cards, 9 hard drives, 2 LAN cards, and 2 optical interface cards. > >We also found a short rack of hard drives at the junk dealers place but, I >didn't get them. I noticed that they had the fibre connectors but, at the >time didn't realize the computers had fibre interfaces :-( > >I might go back later and get the rack. If it's still there (Joe?) Nope, he scrapped it the next day. It's on it's way to China now. :-( Art has some fiber drives but I don't know if he'll part with them. I'll probably see him today. If I do I'll ask. Sorry I haven't answered your messages soooner. We went and picked up three more loads yesterday and I didn't get back till late. I'll try to pack the CD drive and get it in the mail today. BTW we got a SGI Onyx Reality Engine2 yesterday. It's HUGE!!!!! I'm taking Bob R. out to look at it this morning. Joe >

26 years, 1 month

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HP 85 stuff

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Joe <rigdonj(a)intellistar.net> wrote: > At 10:08 AM 7/4/00 -0700, Eric wrote: > >On a related note. I have several machines with HPIB/GPIB/IEEE-??? > >type interfaces, and occasionally see disk drives with the same interface. > > I know HP and the Commodore Pets both used that interface. So does my > Tektronix 4051. I don't know if anyone else used it. The DEC MINC (a PDP-11 dressed up for Laboratory use) typically came with an IBV11 card - Qbus GPIB. I have one but I've never programmed anything for it. Presumably, the MINC manuals have more than enough info to get a working start under RT-11. -ethan ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com/

26 years, 1 month

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Computype Compuedit Revisited.

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

I was told, but cannot verify, that one of our local newspapers (the Louisville Courier-Journal) had one of these systems; the guy who gave me a "printout" >from a demo program (it was a bunch of words set in various fonts with various additional attributes like boldface, Italics, etc, printed on a plastic film) said the Computype system was front-ended by a DECsystem-20. hth, -doug q > -----Original Message----- > From: David Vohs [mailto:netsurfer_x1@hotmail.com] > Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2000 6:24 PM > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Computype Compuedit Revisited. > > > Some months ago I asked on this group what the Computype > Compuedit computer > was. I was told by someone (who is that person, by the way?) > that it was the > front-end machine to a photo-typesetter from the early 80's. > Does anybody > know where I can find pictures of this thing in operation? > ____________________________________________________________ > David Vohs, Digital Archaeologist & Computer Historian. > Home page: http://www.geocities.com/netsurfer_x1/ > > Computer Collection: > > "Triumph": Commodore 64C, 1802, 1541, FSD-1, GeoRAM 512, MPS-801. > "Leela": Macintosh 128 (Plus upgrade), Nova SCSI HDD, Imagewriter II. > "Delorean": TI-99/4A, TI Speech Synthesizer. > "Monolith": Apple Macintosh Portable. > "Spectrum": Tandy Color Computer 3, Disto 512K RAM board. > "Boombox": Sharp PC-7000. > ____________________________________________________________ > ______________________________________________________________ > __________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 1 month

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CRC errors

by allisonp＠world.std.com

From: Tim Mann <mann(a)pa.dec.com> >Of course, with floppy disks we have sectors of 128 to 1024 *bytes*, not >bits, and the CRC is only 16 bits, not 32, so I don't think we can do >much correction. With a 1024 byte sector, it already takes 13 bits of >information to say where a 1-bit error is. So if we use a CRC16 to correct >it, we have about a 2^(-3) = 1/8 probability that if more than one bit >is in error, we'll make a spurious correction. Therein lies the difference, the use of CRC vs ECC, floppies have a fairly high soft error rate compared to hard errors so detecting an error and rereading is the strategy. It is also an economy of design that comes >from the characteristic otherwise you can bet there would be ECC. Allison

26 years, 1 month

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Computype Compuedit Revisited.

by netsurfer_x1＠hotmail.com

Some months ago I asked on this group what the Computype Compuedit computer was. I was told by someone (who is that person, by the way?) that it was the front-end machine to a photo-typesetter from the early 80's. Does anybody know where I can find pictures of this thing in operation? ____________________________________________________________ David Vohs, Digital Archaeologist & Computer Historian. Home page: http://www.geocities.com/netsurfer_x1/ Computer Collection: "Triumph": Commodore 64C, 1802, 1541, FSD-1, GeoRAM 512, MPS-801. "Leela": Macintosh 128 (Plus upgrade), Nova SCSI HDD, Imagewriter II. "Delorean": TI-99/4A, TI Speech Synthesizer. "Monolith": Apple Macintosh Portable. "Spectrum": Tandy Color Computer 3, Disto 512K RAM board. "Boombox": Sharp PC-7000. ____________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by allisonp＠world.std.com

From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> >Yes, but when the microcontroller + Xtal + caps clocks fine on a PCB and >fine on stripboard[1], but fails to work on a breadboard, then I think I am >justified in (partially) blaming the breadboard ;-). No Your not! it is a lousy oscillator and susceptable to stray and all manner of bad things. I've seen them NOT work on very well laid out 4 layer boards as well. >Deadbugging is great!. It's good to a few hundred MHz at least. I've used >if for analogue stuff many times. Yes it is, I've used it to 1GHZ with great success. While I was sick last week I even kluged a 75m phone RX on a 2x4" peice complete with 6kc bandwidth mechanical filter. Looks kinda poor but works solid. Allison

26 years, 1 month

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who knows: Celerity [GEI Rechnersysteme] ?

by xds_sigma7＠hotmail.com

One more addition: They were bought by FPS (good ol' Floating Point Systems), in 1988, with the resulting company being called FPS Computing. The FPS 500-series machines are actually Celerity 6000-series minisupers. This company was another company like Convex, Alliant, Sequent, etc. Will J ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 1 month

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who knows: Celerity [GEI Rechnersysteme] ?

by anmu＠mm-lab.uni-tuebingen.de

hello ! someone offered my a Celerity computer from 'GEI Rechnersysteme'. it is mounted in a 19" rack and has a built in tape drive. unfortunately they cannot provide me further information. so I would like to ask you on the classiccmp-list: - where can I get further information about this machine ? - what hardware is in it ? [bus, cpu,...] - what operating systems run on it ? - should I take it or leave it ? thanks for help, Andreas -- ********************************************************* * Andreas Mueller * * * * Multi-Media-Labor || Uni-Tuebingen * * phone: +49 7071-2978567 or +49 7071-2977821 * *********************************************************

26 years, 1 month

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who knows: Celerity [GEI Rechnersysteme] ?

by xds_sigma7＠hotmail.com

This should do it: (sent to the list for everyone's benefit) DATELINE: San Diego, CA March 3, 1986 Word Count:440 Celerity Computing 9692 Via Excelencia San Diego, CA 92126 619-271-9940 CELERITY SIGNS MAJOR OEM PACT WITH LEADING EUROPEAN DISTRIBUTOR SAN DIEGO, March 3, 1986 -- Less than a month after Celerity Computing's introduction of two new superminicomputer design systems, the company has signed a $3 million agreement to supply OEM configurations of the systems to GEI Rechnersysteme GmbH, Aachen, West Germany, a leading European systems house and distributor of of computer systems. Under terms of the two-year agreement, Celerity equipment, including its proprietary 32-bit ACCEL (TM) processor, will be incorporated into systems GEI manufactures and distributes to end-users in industrial automation, engineering design and simulation, and communications. GEI sells both customized and turnkey solutions throughout West Germany and Switzerland to customers including BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, Ford, Philips and the German government. "This agreement with GEI represents not only a significant expansion of our presence into the European market, but also a major third- party endorsement of the performance and capabilities of our systems in the mechanical engineering arena," said Stephen Vallender, President of Celerity Computing. GEI installed more than 400 computer systems in 1985. The company is 50 percent-owned by AEG, which recently was acquired by Daimler- Benz/Mercedes. "We want to deliver the highest-quality, top-performance computer products to our customers," said Michael Emrich, President of GEI Rechnersysteme. "We ran benchmarks with all the players in the supermini and CAD/CAM markets, and Celerity clearly beat the others in performance and price." Celerity's UNIX (R) - and reducted instruction set (RISC)-based supermini design systems are the fastest and most powerful office_ environment systems in their price class for engineering and scientific applications. The Celerity C1260, introduced in January, 1986, is a dual-processor system with a benchmarked throughput of 6.15 million Whetstone instructions per second (W/MIPS). It is priced at $110,000 for a functional system configuration. The mid- range C1230, also introduced in January delivers 3.25 W/MIPS for $75,000. Both are deskside systems, allowing engineers to complete design tasks and compute-intensive analysis operations without off- loading to more expensive, remote computers. Three-year old Celerity Computing delivered its first computer system, the C1200, in November 1984. The company has installed more than 60 systems in leading corporations, research centers and universities throughout the United States. Its supermini design systems provide advanced design and analysis capabilities to professionals in a variety of fields, including automotive, manufacturing, aviation and aerospace, molecular modeling, animation, and research. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 1 month

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(Fwd) [HP3000-L] Old 960 out to pasture.

by ss＠allegro.com

For anyone out there with an HP 3000/960 (or 960 or 980), or an HP 9000/860 (or 850 or 880?): ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Subject: [HP3000-L] Old 960 out to pasture. From: Debus-David(a)AER.ARAMARK.COM Greetings All, I am finally decommissioning my old and trusty 960. I have gutted the chassis for of all usable boards. They are all available to anyone interested in spare parts for the cost of shipping. One hard to find item is a SCSI bootable CA. There are numerous FL cards and the usual HP-IB cards. I need to move this quickly due to floor space problems. First interested party takes all. Thanks ------- End of forwarded message ------- No...I don't know where he is! (Please don't flame him) Stan Stan Sieler sieler(a)allegro.com www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html www.allegro.com/sieler

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by allisonp＠world.std.com

From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> >> That's so true! I was surprised to read in the spec's for my first ones >> (and last, by the way) that the capacitance between adjacent contacts is 5 >> pf, I don't remember much else about them. > >And that's probably being somewhat optimistic!... > >I have certainly seen microcontrollers fail to clock properly when >they've been used on these breadboards. Hang a xtal and the 2 33pF (or >whatever) capacitors off them and the strays will mess things up. Often it's not the breadboard but the crude oscillator circuit that was used. the basic osc used in theory should never work but crystals are less deterministic and don't know that. The side effect is hard starting and a slight offset from the marked frequency. >Since soldering is so much more reliable, and just as fast once you get >used to using the soldering iron, I don't see the point of said >breadboards. But anyway... Different issue. FYI I breadboard on a peice of cheapo copper clad AKA dead bug or as the RAH calls it "ugly" construction. Works well and the groundplane is hard to beat. Either name, you lay the bugs upside down and point to point wire them (solder, programming language #1). Copper is ground and everything else aint. Goes together fast and tends to be fast logic and UHF friendly. Allison

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

I suggest it be named "TIMBER - Data Logger" both for the creator and function. Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu May be intoxicated from too much screen cleaner

26 years, 1 month

1
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Looking for....

by steverob＠hotoffice.com

Get a couple more guys/gals and we could have our own mini-VCF. Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: LFessen106(a)aol.com [mailto:LFessen106@aol.com] > Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 3:39 PM > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Looking for.... > > > Well let me know if you want to come down here for a shopping > trip/vacation. I can take you to a lot better places than > Dismal World. > > Joe > > >> > > You're on :-) I occasionally get down to Orlando..! > -Linc. > >

26 years, 1 month

1
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Great Finds

by steverob＠hotoffice.com

> That's probably a DDS (aka "DAT") drive ... at least, that's > the only drive > I've ever seen built-in to any HP 9000/8x2 or HP 3000/9x2. > (It'll be a DDS-1, most likely) That's what I suspected but, wasn't sure. I'll get some so that I'll have a system backup. Any idea how much data fits on one? > How much memory do you have? (The 8x2 and 9x2 could have > memory plugged into > just about any slots (front or back!). One of the systems is configured with 4 X 8MB of memory. The other has 1 X 32 MB. I also have 8 additional 8MB modules that were pulled from the system with the bad CPU. Haven't had a chance to check them out yet. Between the two system (and spares), I have 6 HPIB interface cards, 10 I/O MUX cards, 9 hard drives, 2 LAN cards, and 2 optical interface cards. We also found a short rack of hard drives at the junk dealers place but, I didn't get them. I noticed that they had the fibre connectors but, at the time didn't realize the computers had fibre interfaces :-( I might go back later and get the rack. If it's still there (Joe?) > > work. Whenever I try to cpio or fbackup to the tape, the > drive will try to > > What version of HP-UX? Jeesh... I'm not even sure what versions are installed. One system hadn't been booted since 1996 the other hadn't been booted since 1994 so, the OS isn't exactly current. I've got the install CDs for HP-UX 10.20 Series 800 but am having trouble with the CD-ROM. Once I get the OS reinstalled, it should be a lot easier to diagnose the tape drive problem. > How did you configure the tape drive (ls -l /dev/...whatever...) I tried using some of the existing devices (ioscan -fn) but that didn't work. It looks like the system is using the driver "tape1". Not sure if that's correct or not? I also tried creating special files (mksf -H 52.0 /dev/...whatever...) with a variety of parameters but, just haven't hit the right combo yet. When I try to write to the tape, the drive displays "Write, Read, Write, Read, blah, blah...). Then the console says something like "Write error in tape header...). I don't believe it wrote any data but, I do think the setup is pretty close. At this point, I'm suspicious of the driver. Thanks, Steve Roberson

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>> Dealing with the >> different modulations, as you've named, is a software post-processing task. >You prefer software solutions. I prefer hardware. It doesn't make either >of us wrong. When you close your eyes, you see pseudocode. I see schematics. I've been using variants on "raw data capture" for years, and I find it *most* flexible when the data is captured in its rawest forms. In some cases this means running the signal from the head through an A/D converter and logging. This gives the most opportunities to apply funky data recovery techniques in software in case the media is old and rotting away. Taking the data from multiple reads passes - in some cases with the head stepped a fraction of track in and out - is a very powerful technique. Not everyone has floppy drives that are capable of stepping in 1/16th track increments, I realize :-). (I use a heavily hacked up pair of Persci's for this.) Tim.

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>>some controllers, many of which use a less-than-ideal timebase to define >>the precompensation offsets imposed on the data stream. >This is true, or worse used oneshots. generally the time base for the >bit encoding was always a crystal with not worse than 200ppm error >and less than 50ppm drift. The typical system was usually within >50ppm of exact and drifted less than 25ppm over temperature extremes. >Often the actual data rate was far lower than that reference(usually 1/4 >or 1/8th). IMHO it's very misleading - or even worse, foolish - to worry about errors in the ppm range when the instantaneous rotation speed of the floppy can vary a few percent. Most data recovery circuits - even the most simplistic one-shot FM decoder - can take a 25% change in data rate in stride. Sure, they don't have as much error margin if you stray that far, but my point is that we're not dealing with National Bureau of Standards platinum-iridium references here. >I'd suggest some factor less than .5, flux shift errors on floppies >rarely move a great amount unless the spindle bearings are rattling >loose. Actually based on media and expected recording rate it's >possible to plug in a set of expected timing windows and add/subtract >a "precompenstation" window amount based on adjacent bits. For >example adjacent ones or zeros (especially more than two bits) >tend to spread or compress over patterns like alternating ones >and zeros. Look up "PRML" or "Partial Response Maximum Likelihood". It's a branch of signal decoding for use in situations where adjacent pulses most definitely have measureable effects on each other. >Further with all the "timing image" in a memory it should be possible >to look at longer strings of transistions and do simple predictive >forcasting (software PLL). Add to that the encoding form (FM, >MFM, M2FM, RLL or GCR), and previous bits history it should be >straightforward enough to predict the likely next transistion(s) >be they one or zero. Most uses of PRML look both forward *and* backwards. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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ODT tutorial / online docs?

by mrbill＠mrbill.net

Anybody know where I can find an ODT tutorial/documentation (for a PDP 11/02) online? I'm having trouble booting a system... (http://www.pdp11.org/pics/pdp1102.jpg) Bill -- +-------------------\ /-----------------+ | Bill Bradford | www.sunhelp.org | | mrbill(a)mrbill.net | www.decvax.org | | Austin, Texas USA | www.pdp11.org | +-------------------/ \-----------------+

26 years, 1 month

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Reading disks with Catweasel

by mann＠pa.dec.com

I noticed that someone forwarded one of my early messages about the Catweasel software I was working on to the list. I've made a lot more progress since then, so in case anyone is interested, below are a few more messages giving the latest news. Basically, it's working well, even on 8" disks. My program (cw2dmk) reads disks into a file format that represents decoded FM or MFM data, with the location of ID address marks noted, but no other indication of missing clocks or other odd stuff. This might be useful beyond the two TRS-80 emulators that currently support it, but it isn't the universal format that folks on this list were trying to design a month or two ago. Designing a format like that is an interesting problem. After my experience reading disks with the Catweasel, I'm not sure that simply recording the raw sample data is a good archival format. After my program decodes the FM or MFM data and checks for things like CRC errors and missing/unexpected data address marks, there are a fair number of errors that go away if I do a few retries at resampling the track. (Most disks have none, but they happen often enough to be noticeable when I'm reading a lot of disks.) So an archiver that just blindly sampled each track once without trying to decode it might end up recording data that could not be decoded later. Also, writing a good decoder is a bit of a pain, and some (what appears to me) black magic to reconstruct the data after bit-shifting has occurred. It would be nice to do the decoding once, up front, and archive decoded data. On the other hand, really strangely copy-protected disks from systems with disk controllers that are partly implemented in software might not be decodable using a general-purpose algorithm. Maybe it would be best to *try* to decode the data, do some retries if it can't be decoded, and archive both the result of decoding and the raw samples just for maximum safety.... --Tim ========Message 1======== From: mann(a)pa.dec.com (Tim Mann) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 19:47:28 -0700 (PDT) To: trs80(a)cs.ubc.ca Subject: Announcing cw2dmk: read any TRS-80 floppy with a Catweasel ----- Background: The Catweasel ISA floppy disk controller is an add-in card for the PC ISA bus. It uses specialized hardware, not a standard floppy disk controller chip, and it can be programmed to read and write just about any disk format. Catweasel cards were in short supply for a while, but as of July 2000 they should be available for purchase again. See http://www.jschoenfeld.com/ and http://apd2.tripod.com/catweasl.htm. I've written a free program for the Catweasel called cw2dmk that can read any disk written by a TRS-80, including single-density and copy-protected disks. The disk is saved as a DMK image file, suitable for use in either the xtrs TRS-80 emulator for Unix, or David Keil's TRS-80 emulator for MS-DOS. cw2dmk runs on Linux, MS-DOS, or Windows 95/98. You can download it from http://www.tim-mann.org/trs80resources.html. Source code is included. My program uses some code from Michael Krause's Linux drivers for the Catweasel (which work with Amiga and MS-DOS diskettes). Besides TRS-80 disks, cw2dmk should be able to read any disk written by a WD177x/179x or by a standard PC (NEC765-compatible) disk controller. Currently it's not too useful to have non-TRS-80 disks in DMK format, but perhaps additional tools that work with this format will become available in the future. For example, I'd like to write a program that uses a Catweasel to write a DMK image back to a real floppy disk. This would provide a nice way of archiving disks from many old machines and making physical copies when needed. Another likely future direction for cw2dmk is to be able to write JV1 and JV3 disk images, when the disk being read can be represented in one of those formats. Those are the formats that Jeff Vavasour's and Matthew Reed's TRS-80 emulators need. By the way, I don't get a cut of Catweasel sales. :-) ========Message 2======== From: mann(a)pa.dec.com (Tim Mann) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 21:33:59 -0700 (PDT) Newsgroups: comp.sys.tandy, comp.os.cpm Subject: Re: Announcing cw2dmk: read any TRS-80 floppy with a Catweasel ----- Oops. In that announcement, I forgot to say "TRS-80 Model I, III, 4, or 4P". These are the models that are currently supported by the emulators that use DMK format. Disks written by other computers that used the TRS-80 brand name will probably be readable too, but the images aren't currently too useful since there is not yet any software that uses DMK format other than these emulators. I do plan to read some Model II/12 disks for archival purposes when I get my 8" drive plugged in, and I'm also going to take a shot at reading some 3.5" Model 100 disks that someone is mailing me, but I don't have any results to report on that yet. ========Message 3======== From: Gary Shanafelt <...> Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 22:02:21 -0500 To: trs80(a)cs.ubc.ca Subject: Re: Announcing cw2dmk: read any TRS-80 floppy with a Catweasel ----- Tim, In your last message about the Catweasel board, you mentioned David Keil's emulator using DMK image files while Jeff Vavasour's and Matt Reed's used JV1 and JV3 format files. What's the difference? All the emulators call their files .DSK files; I recently downloaded David's program, set it up with some of the .DSK files from the Vavasour/Reed emulators, and it worked with them without further ado. I thought all these .DSK files were a single standard TRS-80 emulator format, but I guess not? ========Message 4======== From: mann(a)pa.dec.com (Tim Mann) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 21:27:01 -0700 (PDT) To: Gary Shanafelt <...> Cc: trs80(a)cs.ubc.ca Subject: Re: Announcing cw2dmk: read any TRS-80 floppy with a Catweasel ----- The emulators all give the .DSK extension to their files, but they are using several different formats, which I've given the names DMK, JV1, and JV3. Full details are on http://www.tim-mann.org/trs80/dskspec.html, but here is a summary. JV1 can only handle single density disks with directory on track 17. Jeff Vavasour's Model I emulator works only with JV1 images. Jeff's Model III/4 emulator doesn't support JV1 images at all, but all the other major emulators will work with a JV1 image if you give one to them. JV3 can handle normal single and double density disks, but most forms of copy-protected disk are not representable. Almost all of the images on Ira Goldklang's site (www.trs-80.com) are in JV3. All the major emulators except Jeff's Model I emulator will work with JV3 images. Jeff originated this format in his Model III/4 emulator. DMK can handle anything that a TRS-80 disk controller can write to the disk, including all the copy-protected formats. Even protected game disks where the program does a Read Track and looks for specific data in the gaps between sectors can be recorded in DMK format and will run in emulators that support it. Currently only David Keil's emulator and xtrs support this format. David originated the format. Ira now has a small collection of images in DMK format that can't be represented in JV3 format. ========Message 5======== From: mann(a)pa.dec.com (Tim Mann) Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 16:17:10 -0700 (PDT) To: ... Subject: Early 8" results with Catweasel on LS-DOS disks ----- Thought you might be interested to hear that I tried reading a few 8" disks with a Catweasel last night, using my custom program (cw2dmk). They were mostly TRS-80 Model II LS-DOS disks with an FM track 0 and MFM on the rest of the disk. The FM was easy to read; the MFM required tweaking the thresholds in my program because the bit-shifting effect (that write precompensation is meant to adjust for) varies so much from the outer to inner tracks, and makes a sudden jump backward at track 44 where write precomp was turned on when the disks were written. I found a setting that worked, but it's touchy; a few retries were needed on tracks near 43 and 76. I might try to devise an algorithm that sets the thresholds automatically for each track by doing a histogram and looking for the exact location of the peaks and valleys, or I might try doing something that emulates a phase locked loop in software instead of using fixed thresholds.... The main disks I tried reading were copies of Model II/12 LS-DOS that Lamar Owen and Fred Dolan sent. The disk Fred sent had CRC errors on about half the tracks (usually one error per track), no matter what I did. I'm going to poke a bit more to see if it's a problem with my software or if the disk is really bad. The disks Lamar sent read OK once I got the thresholds right. ========Message 6======== From: mann(a)pa.dec.com (Tim Mann) Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 20:30:21 -0700 (PDT) To: ... Subject: Re: Early 8" results with Catweasel on LS-DOS disks ----- An update for those who may be interested: I found a heuristic to make up for insufficient write-precompensation (or for flux transitions that were close together moving farther apart over time). With this added to cw2dmk, I was able to read most of the 8" disks that I have without getting errors, including the one from Fred Dolan that previously showed CRC errors on about half the tracks. Here's the idea. When decoding MFM, the interval between each two successive flux transitions should be either short (2 cycles), medium (3), or long (4). Because of a physical effect, short transitions that come next to medium or long ones tend to spread out into their space. So after I classify a transition, I compute how long it ideally should have been and save the difference between the real and ideal lengths. I then add k times the difference to the next transition before classifying it, where k is a tuning parameter. With k=0, we have the old algorithm. A value of k around 0.5 to 0.8 made the difficult disks readable. Usually the exact value wasn't too critical, but on the really bad disks I had to experiment a bit to find the best setting. I imagine this technique (or something better) is well known in the disk drive industry, but it was a kick to me when I thought of it and it worked so well. I might go back to some 5.25" disks I have that showed CRC errors when read on a normal PC controller, and see if this trick will let me read some of them. Tim Mann tim.mann(a)compaq.com http://www.tim-mann.org Compaq Computer Corporation, Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, CA

26 years, 1 month

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VAX/VLC memory?

by cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com

Does the VAX 4000/VLC take "standard" 4MB 72 pin simms? What are the requirements on it. --Chuck

26 years, 1 month

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Looking for....

by LFessen106＠aol.com

Well let me know if you want to come down here for a shopping trip/vacation. I can take you to a lot better places than Dismal World. Joe >> You're on :-) I occasionally get down to Orlando..! -Linc.

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by mann＠pa.dec.com

I can't keep track of all the directions this discussion is going in, but here are a few bits of information that might be useful. My software for reading FM and MFM with the Catweasel is available from my Web pages, so you can look at the source code for details of what it does, adapt it to work with different hardware if you prefer to build your own, dissect it and note all its shortcomings, ignore it, or whatever. See www.tim-mann.org/trs80resources.html. There's also a link there to the Linux drivers for the card, which include some writing support and have a different implementation of reading (but which uses the same idea), so you can look at that source code too. The basic idea for reading is very simple. I have two thresholds, t1 and t2. Given a sample s, if s <= t1, I classify it as short (10); if t1 < s <= t2, as medium (100); if t2 < s, as long (1000). This lets me reconstruct the MFM clock/data bit stream. I set the thresholds statically, by looking at histograms of samples from various tracks of different disks, and placing the thresholds rougly in the middle of the valleys between the three observed peaks. This technique is crude (maybe it would be better to emulate a phase locked loop in software, for instance), but it works well for 3.5" and 5.25" disks, and some 8" disks too. I'll come back to the other 8" disks in a bit. When I said something about "bit-shifting" with the Catweasel, I was *not* talking about reading the same track repeatedly and getting different results. On what I was *not* talking about: I haven't done any systematic tests to see how much the sample data read from a track varies from one attempt to another. I do know that when I fail to decode some data (getting a CRC error), rereading the track sometimes helps. I would expect some variation from one read to the next because the magnetic signal on the disk doesn't really have sharp edges; the electronics inside the drive that decide where the flux transitions are going to produce somewhat different results from one try to the next. I would expect this is worse on old disks that are fading or where tiny bits of oxide are starting to flake off. On what I *was* talking about: There is a physical effect where two flux transitions that are recorded close together tend to move apart. An Intel FDC data sheet that I have calls this effect "bit-shifting", but I don't know whether that's a standard term or not. Write precompensation approximately corrects for this effect, but not exactly. On some 8" disks that I've read, I've seen severe cases of this effect, enough that I had to put a heuristic into my program to compensate for it. On at least a few disks, the effect increased up to track 43, backed way off at track 44, and then slowly increased again; this is consistent with the disk having been written in a system that turns on write precomp using the TG43 (track greater than 43) signal, but that doesn't have enough precomp. The size of the errors I've seen is much more than one Catweasel clock, so it doesn't have anything to do with the Catweasel sample rate beating against the data rate. So, what's the heuristic? It's quite crude and oversimplified too, but seems to work pretty well. The general idea is that if an interval is a bit off from what you were expecting it to be, multiply the error by some factor around 0.5 to 0.8 (you sometimes have to tune it for each disk if they are particularly bad), and add that to the next interval before classifying it as short, medium, or long. This helped immensely, making some disks that previously had a CRC error on about half the tracks even after many retries read perfectly, with no retries. Here is some code that should make it clearer: void mfm_decode(int sample) { static float adj = 0.0; int len; if (sample + adj <= mfmthresh1) { /* Short */ len = 2; } else if (sample + adj <= mfmthresh2) { /* Medium */ len = 3; } else { /* Long */ len = 4; } adj = (sample - (len/2.0 * mfmshort)) * postcomp; if (out_fmt == OUT_SAMPLES) printf("%d%c ", sample, "--sml"[len]); mfm_bit(1); while (--len) mfm_bit(0); } Tim Mann tim.mann(a)compaq.com http://www.tim-mann.org Compaq Computer Corporation, Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, CA

26 years, 1 month

2
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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>Since soldering is so much more reliable, and just as fast once you get >used to using the soldering iron, I don't see the point of said >breadboards. But anyway... I've been using these breadboards for about 20 years now and I still like them for a lot of things. They certainly aren't good for all possibilities, but I regularly do digital logic into the 50 MHz range with them and have few problems. Modern CMOS logic families seem to be a lot more forgiving for poor bypassing and high-impedance power sources than good old-fashioned "straight" TTL. In fact, just for fun, I've pulled out *all* the bypass capacitors around a 40 MHz HC TTL circuit and found that it operated identically to before the bypass capacitors were pulled. Compare this to old-fashioned straight 7400-series logic where if I don't put bypass capacitors everywhere all the flip flops randomly choose a new state every time the clock ticks! On the subject of breadboarding with solder and wires: are there PC-boards designed specifically for "place-and-tack" surface-mount prototyping? I'm envisioning a power grid, a bunch of SOIC pads with small fanout, a place for some surface-mount discrete parts, and maybe some way of putting a header connector on the board. That'd be really useful. Sort of like those through-hole prototyping PC boards that used to be popular. Tim.

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by mann＠pa.dec.com

Let me interject a few notes about the Catweasel here. Quoting from Tim Shoppa's original message: > 1. The Catweasel uses some custom LSI parts, as far as I can figure out. It uses a PLD. The 1996 version, which I have, uses a MACH 211. I'm not sure what the new 2000 version uses; probably something similar. The PLD equations aren't released, though, so knowing this doesn't tell you much. > My circuit is much more "hackable", anyone with a TTL databook can figure > out what it does and improve on it. Or you can build one yourself from > scratch. (Other than the 128K*8 SRAM, all the other parts were literally > purchased from the local electronics shop. Heck, most of the chips can > be bought at Radio Shack!) Total cost for the chips in my buffer is > about $30.00, about half of that in the SRAM chip. I sympathize with that, but for those of us who are much better at software than hardware, something off-the-shelf is a big plus. You can get a Catweasel for $85 to $95 completely assembled. > 2. The Catweasel uses a proprietary, largely undocumented programming > interface. My circuitry is entirely open, and I think it's pretty easy > to program. (My first hack at acquiring data with the new buffer was > dashed off in about half an hour under QBASIC.) You can now get the documentation for the programming interface just by asking the designer (Jens Schoenfeld). He told me that it isn't secret anymore. The document is in German, but I could provide a translation if anyone needs it. (My German isn't that great, but the document is so simple you can almost read it without knowing any German.) There is also an open-source Linux driver, and the program I wrote for reading FM and MFM disks to one of the TRS-80 emulator formats (cw2dmk) is also open source. > 3. The Catweasel requires a bus slot inside a PC-clone. My new buffer uses > a much more general purpose parallel interface. So you can hook it up > to a laptop, or even to something that isn't a PC-clone at all. That's a real plus; on the other hand, if you do have a PC clone with an ISA slot, it's more convenient having the board inside the computer than hanging off the parallel port (especially if you're already using the parallel port for something else). > Those are what I see as advantages over the Catweasel. There are also > some disadvantages: > > 4. You can't just go out and buy my buffer, but you can buy Catweasels > off the shelf. > > 5. My buffer is strictly "read-only" as I use it. I think the Catweasel > (and Compaticard) both allow writing. Yes, the Catweasel allows writing. I haven't tried this yet, though. Another point to note is that the Catweasel samples at 7 or 14 MHz (software selectable). In reading some old 8" MFM disks, I found that there had been a lot of bit-shifting over the years (or maybe there was not enough write precomp applied to begin with), and I had to use an extra heuristic to make them readable at all. I'm not sure that 4 MHz would have been a high enough sample rate for these. Tim Mann tim.mann(a)compaq.com http://www.tim-mann.org Compaq Computer Corporation, Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, CA

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>One final point that perhaps Tim could answer. If he does provide a >schematic, would he have any objections if somebody else created a CPLD >(or FPGA, or..) version? Giving him full credit for the original idea, of >course. Because if he doesn't mind, then the whole issue goes away. You >can build whichever version suits you... The entire idea of discussing my circuit here was to get some ideas for improvements, *and* to make it clear that this was entirely an "open" hardware design and a "non-secret" programming interface. The circuit is hardly original enough for me to claim it to be my idea, especially as other manufacturers have been making proprietary interfaces that do the same thing for at least a decade. I wanted to make the design public so that it will last for longer than your typical PC-clone piece of hardware. Tim.

26 years, 1 month

1
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Cipher Streamer / DEC TS05 Tape Drive

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> >It seems strange for the drive to look so otherwise perfect and > >these items to be mush. Any thoughts? > > Storage conditions, especially atmospheric ozone. I spent 6 years > living in LA, and the lifetime of my natural-rubber bike tires there > was measured in months. Foam would either dry up and turn brittle > or go the other way and turn gooey, typically within a couple of > years of manufacture. > > Obviously temperature and exposure to UV light/direct sunlight are > factors too. Well, heat I'd buy, but other areas of the drive would have shown the effects of sun, and the hub is inside, away from light. I was wondering what storing the unit in the presence of unsealed containers of petrochemicals might do... or even worse, whatever a medical school (formaldehyde?) might have in storage... -dq

26 years, 1 month

3
2
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old Mac parts

by Marion.Bates＠dartmouth.edu

Hey, I have a friend who's interested in selling the following items, and he asked me to post this to the list. Reply to me if you're interested and I will put you in touch with him. -- MB ---------------------------------------- I looked at some of my junque and the only thing that is all together is one 400K external drive. I found 1 128K board, 1 128K board upgraded to 512 and one later 128/512K board set up as 512K. I haven't looked at all of the cases yet to see if I can make some 128's or not. I found some old HD20 parts that may be for the original, runs off the external drive port on a 512K (fat Mac), using a floppy to start up and recognize the hard drive. The only profile part is a controller board (I think - if I am remembering right). It's all in my basement. The three IBM PC Jr's are still in the garage and haven't been run in years.

26 years, 1 month

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paging Will Jennings

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

Will, I tried to reply to your message but the message was rejected. Check your return address. Joe

26 years, 1 month

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Looking for....

by LFessen106＠aol.com

In a message dated 7/5/00 2:00:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time, rigdonj(a)intellistar.net writes: > Where are you? > > I know where there's a few located in central Florida. > > Joe > Eastern Pennsylvania. -Linc.

26 years, 1 month

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FSOT: Perkin Elmer stuff

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

Hi, I picked up a couple of blue three ring binders with Perkin Elmer logos on them. Both have manuals in them. One is for PECESS Software Packet for a UV/VIS/NIR Spectroscopy and has some printouts with BASIC listings. The other has a manual for Command Descriptions Reference Manual for CDS-3 Application program. Does anyone want them? I'll trade for something I can use like HP manuals, Tektronix 4041 manuals or ???? Joe.

26 years, 1 month

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Cipher Streamer / DEC TS05 Tape Drive

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>On my much-older and much-more-clearly-used Cipher on the Prime, >the rubber pads are fine; on this nearly-new-looking TS05, they >have lost all firmness and have turned almost to the consistency >of tree sap. They didn't drip, they weren't that bad; but one >attempt to load a tape left most of the pads on the inside of the >tape reel. > >It seems strange for the drive to look so otherwise perfect and >these items to be mush. Any thoughts? Storage conditions, especially atmospheric ozone. I spent 6 years living in LA, and the lifetime of my natural-rubber bike tires there was measured in months. Foam would either dry up and turn brittle or go the other way and turn gooey, typically within a couple of years of manufacture. Obviously temperature and exposure to UV light/direct sunlight are factors too. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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Cipher Streamer / DEC TS05 Tape Drive

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

Hello, The TS05 I picked up last week looked to be in perfect condition. There was very little dust on or in it. However, I did notice a slight amount of rust on the shaft coming out of the take-up motor (the top of the shaft is visible through the hub). On further inspection, there is a slight amount of oxidation on the surface of the takeup hub; this can be easily removed with Scotch-Brite, I think. But what disturbs me is this... I found one particular sign that this drive may not have been used for some years. The supply hub has three short arms which emerge from their normal position tucked inside the supply hub and which press against the inside metal rim of the tape reel in order to hold it in place. Each little arm has a small rubber or latex pad which helps to provide grip against the tape reel. On my much-older and much-more-clearly-used Cipher on the Prime, the rubber pads are fine; on this nearly-new-looking TS05, they have lost all firmness and have turned almost to the consistency of tree sap. They didn't drip, they weren't that bad; but one attempt to load a tape left most of the pads on the inside of the tape reel. It seems strange for the drive to look so otherwise perfect and these items to be mush. Any thoughts? Plus, anyone been there/done that? I need to replace these pads, and they weren't listed in the Cipher manual as a replaceable part (you have to replace the entire supply hub, it would seem). tia, -doug quebbeman

26 years, 1 month

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Great Finds

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Unless I'm mistaken, the 7980XC is a current production drive. At least it > was about a year ago. You should be able to still get complete docs direct > from HP. Apparantly, they don't want to admit it being an HP product on their web site, as I can't find it through the usual means. -dq

26 years, 1 month

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Looking for....

by LFessen106＠aol.com

In a message dated 7/5/00 1:03:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time, elmo(a)mminternet.com writes: > > IIRC ADM-5's have gone unsold on Ebay at $19-24 for some time, from > more than one seller. The latest seller has quantity and includes a > transport > case. Exhorbitant? > > I just re-checked Ebay's past and present sales and found 1 (one) sale of ADM terminals....Currently going for $24.00. Seller has 4, HOWEVER, they are going AS IS. I would like to find a <working!> ADM 3 or 5 preferably from someone qualified enough to make that judgement. You see, $24 would be a lot of money with a $60 shipping charge for a broken dumb terminal. -Linc.

26 years, 1 month

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HP Tape drive

by steverob＠hotoffice.com

> > Great drive (If it's the same as the one they OEM'd to Pyramid). > 1600/6250 bpi. > > It's fast and reliable. Is it the SCSI, Pertec or other version. > HPIB... I've been looking for documentation on the web but, haven't found any :-( Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com>

26 years, 1 month

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TRS items taken - Re: newbie intro

by aclark＠envirolink.org

A person in my state has expressed willingness to come to my home and pick up the TRS items. Since such an arrangement would relieve me of the time demands of packing and shipping the items, I have given that person first chance to get all of it. Once he has looked at it, I will repost to the ClassicCmp mailing list regarding what is still available. Thanks for your interest. Arthur Clark

26 years, 1 month

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New find: HP 1000 E series

by fmc＠reanimators.org

Carlos Murillo <cem14(a)cornell.edu> wrote: > Well, I made the cable and plugged it into a terminal. The > right voltages appear on the correct lines. However, > the card never asserts DTR or RTS when I turn the computer on. I think that makes sense -- it looks like DTR and RTS are under program control (i.e. it's up to software to set the appropriate control register bits). > I also discovered that the HD in the 7946 is busted > (haven't opened it yet)-the "online" light doesn't come on, > but the "fault" light does. It seems to have trouble > spinning up. So, loading an OS is out of the question > for a while. Is it possible to at least run some tests > and have it output diagnostics to one of the BACI cards? I suspect it depends on what loader ROMs are installed in the computer. There is a loader ROM that supports booting from cartridge tape drives in an attached 264X terminal. In the meantime, I've keyed in the sample program from the manual (at the end of this message). Turning it into executable code and loading that into the 1000E is left as an exercise for the reader, at least 'til I find time to figure out how to do that sort of thing. Others who know are welcome to chime in! > There is a sheet of paper glued to the front panel with instructions > on how to reboot the system; it says to load the S/s register > with ones in bits 15,14,9, and 6, then hit the store, preset, > some other button, then preset again and finally the run button. Unfortunately, most of the 21xx documentation I have here at home right now is for 2100s, not 21MXs (which are a whole lot closer to 1000s), so I'm just guessing as to what that tells the machine to do, but I expect it's instructions for selecting a given loader ROM (and maybe device) and starting the boot. So...I'll try to keep this in mind for the next foray into storage. What I probably need to look for is the 21MX or 1000 E-Series operating and reference manual, instead of the installation and service manual that I have in front of me. --- cut here --- ASMB,A,B,L,T ORG 100B * ****12966 SAMPLE PROGRAM************************* *THE PROGRAM BEGINS BY CLEARING ALL ADDRESSES OF THE *SPECIAL CHARACTER RAM TO ZEROS.THE 12966 THEN IS *ENABLED TO RECEIVE MODE,1200 BAUD.THE USER ENTERS A *MINIMUM OF 64 CHARACTERS FROM THE TERMINAL KEYBOARD *(HP2640 OR SIMILAR TERMINAL). WHEN BUFFER HALF FULL *(64 CHARS.) IS DETECTED,THE CHARS. ARE TRANSFER FROM *THE FIFO BUFFER OF THE 12966 TO THE CPU. WHEN THIS *TRANSFER IS COMPLETE THE CPU HALTS (HLT 01).THE USER *PRESSES 'PRESET' & 'RUN', THE 12966 GOES INTO THE *TRANSMIT MODE. THE CPU BUFFER (64 CHARS.) IS SENT TO *THE 12966 FIFO BUFFER. WHEN THIS TRANSFER IS COMPLETED *THE 12966 TRANSMITS TO THE TERMINAL UNTIL BUFFER EMPTY *STATUS FLAG SETS. THE CPU NOW HALTS (HLT 02),PRESSING *'RUN' RESETARTS THE PROGRAM. * * A EQU 0 B EQU 1 SCT EQU 12B 12966 IS IN SELECT CODE 12B SAVA BSS 1 SAVB BSS 1 COUNT BSS 1 SIZE DEC 64 64 CHARACTERS BHF OCT 1000 CW3 OCT 030023 CW4R OCT 040011 CW4T OCT 140411 CW5 OCT 050077 CW6 OCT 060000 PAT OCT 777 DAB. DEF DAB CLEAR OCT 060400 ORG 1000B DAB BSS 400 * * ORG 200B START LDA CW4T MASTER RESET,INITIALIZE TRANSMIT OTA SCT LDA CW6 CLEAR OUT SPECIAL CHAR RAM R1 OTA SCT INA CPA CLEAR CHECK IF SPECIAL CHAR RAM IS CLEAR RSS YES IT IS,CONTINUE WITH PROGRAM JMP R1 NO IT ISN'T,CONTINUE CLEARING OVER LDA SIZE SETUP AND INITIALIZE CHAR COUNTER CMA,INA 2'S COMP. STA COUNT LDA CW5 LOAD WORD 5,CLEAR FLAGS OTA SCT LDA CW3 LOAD WORD 3,1 STOP BIT,8 DATA BITS OTA SCT ECHO ON,NO PARITY LDA CW4R LOAD WORD 4,RECEIVE MODE,1200 BAUD OTA SCT CHECK STC SCT,C SET CONTROL 12966 SFS SCT CHECK IF STATUS FLAG SET JMP *-1 NO,NONE IS SET,CONTINUE CLC SCT YES,FLAG HAS SET LIA SCT GET STATUS WORD AND BHF CHECK FOR BUFFER HALF FULL SZA,RSS JMP CHECK BHF NOT SET AS YET LDA CW5 BHF SET,CLEAR STATUS FLAGS OTA SCT LDB DAB. SETUP CPU BUFFER ADDRESS STC SCT,C SET CONTROL 12966 T1 LIA SCT GET A CHARACTER FROM FIFO AND PAT MASK OUT UNWANTED BITS STA B,I STORE CHAR INTO CPU BUFFER INB ISZ COUNT INCREMENT COUNT,COUNT=64? JMP T1 NO,GET NEXT CHARACTER HLT 01 YES,CPU BUFFER IS FULL ***PRESS 'PRESET' AND 'RUN' TO PUT 12966 INTO TRANSMIT *MODE. * NOP LDA CW4T SETUP 12966 TO TRANSMIT @1200 BAUD OTA SCT LDA CW5 CLEAR BUFFERS OTA SCT LDA SIZE SETUP CHAR COUNTER CMA,INA 2'S COMP. STA COUNT LDB DAB. SETUP BUFFER ADDRESS STC SCT,C T2 LDA B,I GET A CHARACTER OTA SCT PUT IT IN THE FIFO BUFFER INB ISZ COUNT INCREMENT COUNT,COUNT=64? JMP T2 NO GET NEXT CHAR!!! LDA CW5 YES,LOAD W TO CLEAR BUFF OTA SCT HALF FULL STC SCT,C SET CONTROL,START TRANSMIT SFS SCT IS BUFFER EMPTY? JMP *-1 NO,CONTINUE SENDING HLT 02 YES, IT IS EMPTY,HALT CPU!! JMP START RESTART 12966 END --- cut here --- -Frank McConnell

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>>2. The Catweasel uses a proprietary, largely undocumented programming >>interface. My circuitry is entirely open, and I think it's pretty easy >>to program. (My first hack at acquiring data with the new buffer was >>dashed off in about half an hour under QBASIC.) >Thier doc's pretty much stink, or at least did when I got mine! It sounds like John Wilson has reverse-engineered at least *some* of their programming interface, though last I heard there were parts of the interface that were a mystery even to him :-). >>Would it be worth writing up my new floppy disk data buffer so that >>others could improve on it? Would anyone be interested in unstuffed and/or >>stuffed PCB's? Should I give it a name? (The "Timweasel", anyone? I >>gotta think of a better name!) >Maybe/probably. It looks like my circuit can be put on roughly a 3" x 4" PCB, meaning that after paying for ExpressPCB overhead it'll be maybe $20 or so per PCB in small quantities. The PCB would have a 24-pin header for interfacing to a PC-clone parallel port (or whatever cabling you want to any other sort of parallel type port on another hardware platform), and 34-pin and 50-pin headers to hook to 3.5", 5.25", and 8" disk drives. I haven't priced the chip costs, but they'll probably total around $25 or so from a hobby place like Jameco or from a real distributor like Digi-Key. Chip lineup in my current design: 1 62C1024 128K*8 SRAM. 1 74HCT373 for latching control signals from parallel port, 3 of the outputs are used to drive the head load and step/direction lines to the floppy drive. 8 MHz crystal clock. 1 74HCT74 for bi-phase clock generation and pulse synchronization from the floppy read line 2 74HCT175's to make a seven-stage ring counter. Only 3 phase outputs are used, one to latch and increment the counters, one to latch the outputs of the shift register, and one to do the write enable. 1 74HCT164 for taking serial data from the 74HCT74 pulse synchronizer and turning it into 7-bit wide parallel out. (The 8th bit comes from the index line). 1 74HCT374 for latching the shift register data and tri-stating it onto the memory buffer bus. 1 74HCT04 and 1 74HCT00 for gating and inverting as necessary 2 74HCT590's and 1 74HCT93 for making a 20-bit buffer address counter. (17 bits are used in the current implementation, though we obviously could just drop in a bigger SRAM and use the extra address bits.) I took some pains in my design to allow things to be sped up for more oversampling at a later date. (I'd probably want to replace the 74HCT93 with a third 74HCT590 just to make all the address counters fully synchronous, but I only had 2 HCT590's in my junk box when I built this implementation). The timing from the ring counter and the rest of the HCT logic ought to make sampling up to 40 MHz very straightforward (I'd have to lengthen the write-enable from the ring counter at higher clock speeds to cover a couple of clock phases). > It would be nice to stuff one in a Linux box, or will it >work in an Alpha under VMS :^) Anything with a bidirectional parallel port oughta work fine. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>The only problem I'd point out is the the 9500 series CPLD's drive only 8 mA >per output and, unless you were planning to pair them up, i.e. use multiple >pins tied together to drive the FD cable, you might have problems. The biggest problem is with the outputs that'll drive the floppy disk bus. Typically it's an open-collector output terminated to +5V with 150 ohms, so you have to be able to sink 30 mA or so. So yes, this may be a concern. (Or you can cheat and tie the lines high with "only" 220 or 300 or 470 ohms - shouldn't be a big problem as long as there's only one drive on the bus.) Do any CPLD's have "real" open-collector outputs, or can you fake it by sending the output into tristate mode? (I'm asking this as a guy who's never designed with CPLD's but does know 74XX00 series logic pretty well.) I don't think it's an issue either way with exactly one controller and one floppy drive on the bus. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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OT?: failure modes of a RAMDAC

by cem14＠cornell.edu

This is OT in that the piece of hardware that I'm looking at (matrox millenium pci card) is newer than 10 years. On the other hand, any comments on this might be useful for older equipment as well. Here's the scoop: the video card in my home computer suddenly started acting flaky. The image flickers and has diminished brightness; at first I thought that it was the monitor, until I noticed that the area inside the dialog window that pops up when operating the setup menus in the monitor does not flicker and has normal brightness. Aha, cable or connector, I thought. So I tested another monitor. Exact same symptoms on the second monitor. Ok, then a cold solder joint in the card. I extracted the card and had a good look at it. Nothing looks wrong. I put the thing back in and it still had the flickering. Then, all of a sudden, brightness jumps back to normal and everything works fine for the rest of the session. Next day, I power up, and several hours later the symptoms reappear suddenly. I am thinking that the output of the RAMDAC is being severely affected by something that diminishes its swing. As far as I can tell, all colors are affected uniformly. The flicker is random, does not appear to be tied to a given frequency, and seems to affect the whole screen (refresh is currently 85 Hz; changing it does not alleviate the problem). So I wonder if there is some oscillation in the output of the RAMDAC or an internal short that limits the swing or what. Has anyone seen this sort of failure before? carlos.

26 years, 1 month

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Friden help

by aw288＠osfn.org

Does anyone on the list have any experience with Friden Automatic Calculators? I have been fooling around with one, and it mostly works, but every few minutes locks up. I am not sure what is causing a problem, as the machine is quite complex. It only locks up when calculating. I am sure it needs a lube job, but at this point all I have done is bathe the whole thing in WD40. When things are going well, I will give it a real lube job. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

Hi folks - The topic of reading or writing older "odd" disk formats (hard-sectored, GCR, whatever) comes up here pretty often. And often the discussion leads towards the Catweasel floppy interface (currently available commercially, as I understand) or the Compaticard interfaces (not currently being manufactured, as I understand). I've recently "modernized" my foreign format disk reading hardware. The idea of both the "old" version and the "new" versions are very similar to each other, and to what other tools like the Catweasel and the Compaticard do: Data from a floppy disk drive comes as a series of pulses on the read data line. All these circuits (using different means) buffer up to an entire track of data in RAM, and then allow a user program to look at the buffer and analyze the data on its own terms. They also allow control over rudimentary floppy functions such as step in/out, load head/start motor, etc. *I* buffer the pulses on the read data line by simply recording a "1" bit if there was a pulse in a window, and a "0" if there wasn't. I sample at 4MHz, meaning that a complete revolution of a floppy requires most a megabit of RAM. I also buffer information such as index pulse data (essential for decoding many hard-sectored floppy formats.) The bit rate from most standard floppy formats is roughly 500 kHz, meaning my 4 MHz sample rate oversamples by a factor of 8 or so. Yes, it's overkill for many applications, but I want to be sure that all information on the floppy is faithfully represented in the buffer. Besides, many GCR and some MFM variants use half- or even third-fundamental-frequency components (sliding the pulse in the window to encode more data without increasing the clock rate) and oversampling is necessary for these formats. Other buffers (I believe the Catweasel falls in this category) record the times between successive pulses in RAM, instead of the "raw bits". My "previous generation" buffer had a megabit of SRAM and interfaced via a 16-bit-in and 16-bit-out parallel interface (usually to a DR11-style interface on a PDP-11). The megabit of SRAM was made up of a whole bunch of 2k*8 SRAMS, meaning that just the buffer memory required a couple of sizable PC boards. (If you're familiar with the technology, you'll get the idea that "previous generation" buffer was based on chips readily available around 15 years ago.) My "new generation" buffer has the same megabit of SRAM - but now in a single SRAM chip - and interfaces via a PC-clone bidirectional parallel port. Other than the big SRAM chip, the rest of the buffer is just eleven SSI and MSI HCTTL IC's. The eleven chips form the PC-side interface, the floppy-side interface, the timing clocks, the buffer sequencer, and the buffer address (17 bits) counters. So how is my buffer different than, for example, the Catweasel? 1. The Catweasel uses some custom LSI parts, as far as I can figure out. My circuit is much more "hackable", anyone with a TTL databook can figure out what it does and improve on it. Or you can build one yourself from scratch. (Other than the 128K*8 SRAM, all the other parts were literally purchased from the local electronics shop. Heck, most of the chips can be bought at Radio Shack!) Total cost for the chips in my buffer is about $30.00, about half of that in the SRAM chip. 2. The Catweasel uses a proprietary, largely undocumented programming interface. My circuitry is entirely open, and I think it's pretty easy to program. (My first hack at acquiring data with the new buffer was dashed off in about half an hour under QBASIC.) 3. The Catweasel requires a bus slot inside a PC-clone. My new buffer uses a much more general purpose parallel interface. So you can hook it up to a laptop, or even to something that isn't a PC-clone at all. Those are what I see as advantages over the Catweasel. There are also some disadvantages: 4. You can't just go out and buy my buffer, but you can buy Catweasels off the shelf. 5. My buffer is strictly "read-only" as I use it. I think the Catweasel (and Compaticard) both allow writing. Would it be worth writing up my new floppy disk data buffer so that others could improve on it? Would anyone be interested in unstuffed and/or stuffed PCB's? Should I give it a name? (The "Timweasel", anyone? I gotta think of a better name!) -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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need homes (fwd)

by vcf＠siconic.com

Stuff up for grabs. Please contact the original sender. Reply-to: crx_runner(a)hotmail.com ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 12:41:24 PDT From: Dave Broadbent <crx_runner(a)hotmail.com> Subject: need homes I have the following to give away: I had started a collection, then decided to stop. I am located in Souderton, PA (near Phila) Apple 111+, with monitor, with three additional drives. I never tested this to see if it works. Compaq Portable, the first model, have two, one works, one does not. Franklin Ace 1000, with BMC monitor(Aug, 1982), with two Rana System 5 1/4 drives, with Gemini 10 printer. This I am sure works. Dave work no. 215 540-0800 ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... VCF 4.0 is September 30-October 1 San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California See http://www.vintage.org for details!

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>For quite some time I've tried to persuade Eric Smith, who's quite >knowledgable about programming the SCENIX SX processor, to write some >firmware that would create, functionally, a FDC chip out of one of these >ultra-fast single-chippers. "Better" is the enemy of "good enough". If I can throw something together in an afternoon out of TTL chips from Radio Shack, why go to the effort of creating what amounts to a custom chip? Maybe my priorities are too much on the "just do it" side, and not enough on the "do it Dick's way" side :-). >Interpreting it in light of the modulation, data format, data rate, etc, is >quite involved, but certainly achievable, though someone has to undertake to >write the code with which to accomplish this. The code obviously varies depending on the encoding method, but my method - a completely public circuit design with easy interface to a wide variety of computers - allows the user to write the decryption code in whatever he/she might be familiar with on whatever platform he/she wants. > Having the entire diskette >sampled as has been suggested, a track at a time means that one's computer >can, at its own pace, reduce, interpret, reformat, etc, the data prior to >writing it to a duplicate. The reformatting of the data into its original >format offers the advantage of phase coherency between sectors so the PLL on >the controller doesn't have to shift phase between sectors. That will make >the job easy in a case where the PLL has, over time, drifted off its nominal >data rate. ??? There is no need for a hardware PLL if you oversample by a factor of a few. >There are, IIRC, 10416 byte-times, nominally in an 8" FD track at MFM. at >16x ovrsampling, that's a fair amount of data. That's absolutely true. But RAM chips are fairly cheap these days, and I took advantage of that in my design. > While there are a number of >256Kx8 SRAMS out there, they're not likely to be lying in the corner unused. I used an ISSI 62C1024-7, a 128K*8 70ns 32-pin DIP, and it's good enough for me. Cost was $12.00. Looking in my Digi-Key catalog, it seems you can get 512K*8 parts for about $15.00 today, but they're in TSSOP's which aren't so quickly breadboarded for me. (Though they are the obvious solution if you transfer my design to a PCB layout.) I'm sure a fair number of people on this list have access to unused 486 motherboards with socketed cache RAM parts in the 32K*8 to 128K*8 range. These oughta do fine too. >I recommend, therefore that such a circuit be devised with DRAMS. Again, "better" is the enemy of "good enough". I made my circuit with parts that were easily available to me, and I decided that it wasn't worth the effort to build a DRAM controller when SRAM is so cheap. (And SRAM kept the parts count down, too...) You obviously have different priorities. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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newbie intro - free TRS stuff

by aclark＠envirolink.org

Hello to all fellow classic computer enthusiasts! I just heard about this mailing list last week. I'm glad to have found such an active discussion group. My primary interest is the Apple ][ & /// series. (I am a member of the venerable Washington Apple Pi.) I would be happy to swap private email with like-minded folks on this mailing list. I am always in search of Apple hardware for my collection, please send email if you have such to unload. Suggestions of individuals and companies who deal in old Apple hardware are also always welcome. I enjoy the old machines, but have been driven nearly mad trying to find hardware that people are actually willing to sell. ATTENTION TRS COLLECTORS: last year I inherited an enormous quantity of software and hardware from an old TRS business network. The console, terminals, cards, and printer are gone. All that remains is available for the cost of shipping, to good homes. I have five large boxes of 8 inch disks, with multiple copies of Xenix, with manuals. Many other boxes of system manuals and other sundries are also available. I also have an external hard drive, "Tandy Thirtyfive Meg Disk System." While I do not collect Tandy, I just can't bear the thought of all this stuff going to a landfill. I know how I feel when I am occasionally subjected to someone's story of how a friend of theirs had a "bunch of old Apple stuff, but finally just threw it all away last year." Anyone within driving distance of south-central Pennsylvania is welcome to come and look at everything. It's all free. If you want it, just arrange to come and pick it up. Regards & Happy 4th, Arthur Clark

26 years, 1 month

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Vintage Computer Festival 4.0

by vcf＠siconic.com

Vintage Computer Festival 4.0 September 30 through October 1, 2000 San Jose Convention Center San Jose, California Mark you calendar! The fourth annual Vintage Computer Festival is scheduled for Saturday, September 30th though Sunday, October 1st at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California. The Vintage Computer Festival is a celebration of computers and their history. The event features speakers, a vintage computer exhibition, a vintage computer marketplace, and contests like The Nerd Trivia Challenge. We showcase all different types of computers for all differents kinds of platforms in all different shapes and sizes. REGISTER EARLY AND SAVE! Since you're already a VCF fan, we'd like to extend an early-bird registration offer to you. Register by July 15th and pay only $15 per person (after July 15th the fee will jump to $20 per person). Your registration includes complete event access, including speakers, the exhibition and the marketplace. And just like last year, the first 32 registrants will receive a VCF t-shirt! Act fast to secure your early registration and a free VCF t-shirt. We've made it easier than ever for you register online as we are now accepting credit card payments. Visit the VCF website for complete details. EXHIBIT YOUR VINTAGE COMPUTER Vintage Computer Collectors: we want you! Exhibit your favorite computer in the Vintage Computer Exhibition. Prizes will be awarded in 12 different categories, as well as a Best of Show prize which includes $50 cash! For complete details on the VCF Exhibition, visit: http://www.vintage.org/2000/exhibit.html To see the exhibits from VCF 3.0 go to: http://www.vintage.org/exhibit99.html BUY/SELL/TRADE AT THE VINTAGE COMPUTER MARKETPLACE Do you have some vintage computer items you'd like to sell? Whether you rent a booth or sell on consignment, the Vintage Computer Marketplace is the premier venue for selling old computers and related items. If you would like to rent a booth or inquire about consignment rates, please send e-mail to vendor(a)vintage.org for more information or visit: http://www.vintage.org/2000/vendor.html CHECK OUT THE NEW SITE! If you haven't visited the VCF website in a while, come on over and have a look at the completely new design. You'll find it easier to navigate and easier to find the information you're looking for. We've got plenty of good stuff to read and hundreds of new links to explore vintage computing on the web. We're constantly adding new content. Stop on by for a visit! TELL A FRIEND! TELL A FRIEND! TELL A FRIEND! We really hope to see you at VCF 4.0! And remember, tell your friends!! Vintage Computer Festival 4.0 September 30th through October 1st, 2000 San Jose Convention Center San Jose, California http://www.vintage.org

26 years, 1 month

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Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

by allisonp＠world.std.com

> *I* buffer the pulses on the read data line by simply recording >a "1" bit if there was a pulse in a window, and a "0" if there wasn't. >I sample at 4MHz, meaning that a complete revolution of a floppy >requires most a megabit of RAM. I also buffer information such as >index pulse data (essential for decoding many hard-sectored floppy formats.) Sounds like a variation of the "Wells" controller ca. 1976, used 1x4k memory to buffer up all the the disks bits. Lots of SSI ttl to serialize/deserial the bits in and out of the ram but otherwise simple and functional. Check early BYTE or KB for the article on it. His design was limited to mfm (then the only thing used) but it would take little to deal with that. >Would it be worth writing up my new floppy disk data buffer so that >others could improve on it? Would anyone be interested in unstuffed and/or >stuffed PCB's? Should I give it a name? (The "Timweasel", anyone? I >gotta think of a better name!) If you would, please. I'd find it interesting. Allison

26 years, 1 month

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languages

by edick＠idcomm.com

English is my second language, though I've been using it as my primary language since I was 6. Because I learned it as my second language, I've developed into one who's somewhat stilted in his usage of the language, and also one who's very much aware of the application of grammar, syntax, and orthography. I am, therefore, thoroughly convinced that American English, if it follows the current trend, will degenerate into a sequence of monosyllabic grunts and whines by the time another couple or three generations have passed. Just look at the more recent additions to the Webster International Lexicon of the English language: words like "duuhh" ... Dick -----Original Message----- From: Gary Hildebrand <ghldbrd(a)ccp.com> To: classiccmp <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 9:37 PM Subject: languages >Interesting dialog on languages . . . . > >I myself have barely mastered English, american style. Somewhere along the >way I took three years of French in High School, the result being that my >English grades shot through the roof. Seems learning a foreign language >helps one master English grammar. Maybe the problem is that one can't >speak correct English in the first place. > >As for the Morse code, I've talked to many people who's answer was "I don't >think I can learn the code." It isn't a matter of skill -- five year old >kids have learned Morse code. I call it a case of 'wanna'. If you wanna >you can learn anything. But since the FCC deregulated the Amateur licencing >structure, getting 5 wpm is fairly easy, if you wanna. > >Gary Hildebrand WA7KKP >

26 years, 1 month

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Archives of OS/360-ish public domain software?

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

Are there any on-line archives of OS/360 software in the public domain? I'm thinking not only of operating system software distributions (which are rumored to be in the public domain), but also of user-group collections of software for these beasts. I'm also interested in software for previous generations of old iron, like IBM 1401's, etc. I've asked around at a couple of prominent computer museums, but they all just shrug their shoulders when I ask them how they archive and index the original software, like they've never considered it to be important. I really feel like I'm talking to all the wrong curators, because they seem to have no interest in the subject at all. I've heard of the Hercules emulator project, but I don't know what software they have archived so far, or what efforts they are currently making. If someone could point me towards an index of their software archives I'd appreciate it. I consider myself to be an expert at archiving DEC-related software, and often am involved in all sorts of projects in that sphere that benefit everyone from hobbyists to those with legal cases, but I know little to nothing about what archives of old IBM stuff are available. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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IDV11-A/IDV11-C

by hofmanwb＠worldonline.nl

Has anybody an idea where I could get/buy the following DEC Special Systems Q-bus cards? 5 or more IDV11-C (M8005) 16 bit digital relais output 3 or more IDV11-A (M5026) 16 bit digital isolated input It would save us a lot of trouble if we could put our hands on them. Thanks in advance Wim

26 years, 1 month

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paper tape punch isnt punching

by lemay＠cs.umn.edu

I bought a paper tape reader/punch on ebay, a DSI NC2400. unfortunately, 2 of the holes arent punching through the mylar tape that came with the unit. does anyone have experience with this unit, or know what might be causing the problem? I know western numerical controls sells refurbished units, but I expect they would charge quite a bit just to replace the punching mechanism. their web page mentions something about "The precision die blocks are interchangeable and field-replaceable in just minutes, no adjustments necessary". so, I'm hoping that means I can buy a new set of punch parts and replace them easily. and hopefully inexpensively. any suggestions welcome, especially if they mean we stop discussing the job market. -Lawrence LeMay

26 years, 1 month

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Getting a good job

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> People are given projects which stress them; if > I ask someone what they're doing and the answer doesn't routinely include > the phrases "...trying to figure out..." then it's time to give > them something more challenging to do. This would be such a miracle to find here in the Louisville area. Instead, it's the opposite: when a superior has asked how I'm doing and when the answer has typically included "...trying to figure out..." then they think I've lost my focus and have gone off on a tangent. The expectation is that you've learned all you need to know, and now you're expected to regurgutate it upon command. And while that was bad in programming, it's even worse in support; my boss is an athelete, and since that's the paradigm he's most familiar with, he expects me to be working from some playbook: you know, 3rd down, 50 yards, use play #32. Sure wish there was an easy way to import that California good attitude here; maybe there's something I could drop in the local water supply? Ok, Echelon, I was just kidding on that last part.... -doug q

26 years, 1 month

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Duplicating an RSX-11M+ system disk.

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>I have a bit of a weird problem, I'm trying to make a 2nd bootable >system disk containig RSX-11M+. > >I have an 11/83 with 2 RD53's and 1 RD54, and the system is on one >of the RD53's. I booted [6,54]brusys.sys and then used DSC to copy >the contents to the 2nd RD53. DSC did not report any error. >Then when trying to boot du2 (the 2nd RD53), nothing happens besides >a number of retries to access the boot information. > >DSC is supposed to copy the boot information as well as the data, >so I'm wondering what I do wrong. Which version of 11M+ are you using? DSC became "unsupported" in recent. versions, the "supported" way of doing what you want is BRU. DSC isn't even included in the last few binary releases. (Thank the heavens that you aren't having to deal with PRESERV or ROLLIN!) -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

26 years, 1 month

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Needs help - Information about older DEC products

by hsappleton＠sprintmail.com

Hi It seems that Compaq does not carry much info on older DEC products. Is there some site where I could enter an identifying number and will be able to get info on that particular products? Regards Headley

26 years, 1 month

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HP 97548D Hard Drives

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

I'm looking for a small number (two or three) of these drives; they're 5 1/4 inch full-height differential SCSI drives; they tend to be found in Sun boxen. Anybody have any they'd be willing to part with via sale/trade? -doug quebbeman

26 years, 1 month

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DEC VRT16 / 1660 monitor

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

I always look at www.monitorworld.com VRT16-DA Resolution: 1280 X 1024 Sync: Sync on Green H freq/Vfreq: 70khz/66hz Tube made by: Sony Tube model: GDM1660 Tube Size: 16" http://www.monitorworld.com/Monitors/dec/VRT16DA.html Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu

26 years, 1 month

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Reviving a MicroVAX II

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

To: David Williams et al I have two MicroVax II's in the deskside cabinets each with 3 drives. I'll check them out at home and report what's in them exactly. I know I have memory and the disks. I haven't opened them recently. If somebody wants them for shipping plus packing I'd gladly transfer them to you. I've got a Microvax 2000 to work with. Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu

26 years, 1 month

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HP 97548D Hard Drives

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>Subj: HP 97548D Hard Drives >I'm looking for a small number (two or three) of these drives; >they're 5 1/4 inch full-height differential SCSI drives; they >tend to be found in Sun boxen. > >Anybody have any they'd be willing to part with via sale/trade? Do you need these exact HP drives? If it's a capacity issue, there's a very valuable technique called "mode page editing" that will let you adjust drive capacities downward so that you can use large-capacity recent-manufacture SCSI drives in place of older low-capacity SCSI drives. It's a very valuable technique when the hardware or OS don't support large-capacity drives, a very common situation with older hardware. Tim.

26 years, 1 month

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C65 owners unite!

by vcf＠siconic.com

I'm passing this message along... >Reply-To: "Andreas Waldhelm" <waldhelm(a)star-edv.de> >From: "Andreas Waldhelm" <waldhelm(a)star-edv.de> >To: <roger(a)sinasohn.com> >Subject: C65 >Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2000 16:45:56 +0200 >Organization: Star EDV >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 > >Hi! > >Im proud to be a Commodore C65 prototype owner. >I want to make a list of all C65 owners and the s/n wich you find on the >back of the C65. This is a good way to find out how many are sold (150?) >and how many are still working. Please mail me if you know any C65 >owners. > >thanks in advance > >Andreas >Hamburg / Germany Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... VCF 4.0 is September 30-October 1 San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California See http://www.vintage.org for details!

26 years, 1 month

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Your dream computer room.

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> On Sat, 1 Jul 2000, Douglas Quebbeman wrote: > > > Speaking of which: anybody know where I could find an old Plato terminal? > > I'd be interested too. I have a manual set for Plato applications. You have a manual set for a CDC-based Plato application? Or for one of the later incarnations of Plato (such as on the TI/99a)? -dq

26 years, 1 month

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Are we done with all this off-topic crap yet?

by foo＠siconic.com

Dudes, can we move on already? Go to the farking employer-master/employee-slave list to carry on all this Phd good/bad, work week long/short shit. Doesn't exist? Good, start one or something. Shit already. Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... VCF 4.0 is September 30-October 1 San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California See http://www.vintage.org for details!

26 years, 1 month

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Getting a Good Job(OT)(Long)

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

Here is my take on excessive work expectations. If that is the example you want to set for your children and expresses your values, i.e. your work is the most important thing in life and all else including family is peripheral, then you should work 80+ hours. However don't be surprised when your children have the same values and don't have time for you. If your company sees you as a resource to be consumed and then discarded for the newer/cheaper model then you may be in the right field. If you are single and want the challenge then work is like a drug, intoxicating for the knowledge and accomplishment. When you are married then perhaps life has other meanings, watching your children grow is exciting. I have been on both sides of this spectrum, when I was single the most excitement, all of my friends, my world revolved around work. When I got married and had children I realized that there was more to life and my values have changed. I'm not saying either lifestyle is the best, just works best for me. The hard part is the interaction between the hardcode work people and the hardcore humans, conflicting values. Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu

26 years, 1 month

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